By January 2018, they had an answer. "He actually had stage four kidney cancer," Bruton said. "He was basically given about two to four months to live." When Bruton was a kid, his dad travelled a lot, so he didn't get to know his dad that well. But after Bruton's mom died, his dad moved from North Carolina to live with Bruton in Colorado. Bruton was in his 40s, his dad was in his 70s. A year later, his dad got sick. Once they got the diagnosis, a woman Bruton was seeing suggested a death doula. "And of course, I'd never heard of it. It sounded a little bit, a little bit hocus pocus-y to me," he said. "I thought, well, I don't think my dad would be up for anything like that."