Powell 'Preacher' Forbes begged his son Dan not to let doctors insert a feeding tube after his kidneys shut down and he was rushed to the hospital.

"It was the first time I had ever seen my father cry," Dan says.

Powell, a Baptist preacher from Paoli, Ind., had signed a living will long before he fell ill. He had made it clear to his family and the nursing home he was in that when the time arrived, they should let God call him home. He didn't want extraordinary measures.

Three times, a feeding tube was inserted through his nose. Three times, Forbes, 83, pulled it out. The hospital staff threatened to have it surgically implanted.

Dan Forbes still isn't sure why the hospital staff insisted on a feeding tube despite his father's wishes. Maybe doctors worried that his father didn't fully understand what it meant to withhold life-prolonging treatment, the younger Forbes says.

Dan honored his father's wishes. "I didn't want to do it. I wanted to keep my father around. I didn't want him to die.

"I now know he's in a place he worked all his life to get to. I know I did the right thing."