Just as Jamie Fontenot said goodbye to her father at a Georgia hospital last month, a couple at the facility was bringing a new life into the world.
Fontenot’s father, 86-year-old James Lee Grimmett, passed away on Jan. 12 at Lafayette General Medical Center. Shortly after, Connie Despanie and Benjamin Hall welcomed their baby boy Kingston, according to CBS News. After the delivery, doctors handed the new parents a letter from Fontenot.
“To my dad’s angel, even though I will never know your name, you are the first child born here after my dad’s passing,” the letter read. “When one life is taken, another is given. Please keep my dad in your prayers.”
Fontenot wrote the letter shortly after her father died and asked hospital officials to give the handwritten note to the first baby born after her father’s death, CBS reports.
Dr. Jennifer Pugliese, who assisted with Despanie’s labor and delivery, gave the letter to the new mom.
“She started reading it silently and she just had tears streaming down her face, it was really beautiful,” Dr. Pugliese told CBS.
Fontenot was “distraught” after her father died at 10:40 a.m. that day, doctors told KADN. But she says she believed it was her mission to deliver her letter to the hospital’s obstetrics unit.
“We stayed in his room for a little bit and then the doctor came in and while we were in the hallway a lullaby played,” Fontenot told KADN, referring to the music that plays throughout the hospital when a baby is born.
“Something just moved me to go get paper and write a note.”
Before receiving Fontenot’s note, Despanie and Hall were having some trouble choosing a middle name for their boy. But after reading Fontenot’s words, they decided to honor the woman’s late father by giving little Kingston the middle name James.
“He would be so proud,” Fontenot told KADN of her father. “So totally proud.”
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The families later met, and Fontenot got to hold Kingston and she showered the little baby with hugs and kisses.
