As Carl's health declined, he spent the last five years of his life bed-ridden. There's nothing desirable about this, but as usual for him and for Bernice, the dark clouds of the situation had their silver linings. Carl required some brief periods in the hospital and several months in a nursing home, but he was able to spend most of his last years in the house where he had lived since the age of 2, with all the warmth and comforts which even the best institutions cannot provide. The living room of the house was converted into something like a hospital room, with special bed and support systems, but none of the cold, impersonality a more standard end-of-life environment would have enforced on him.

Dying alone is one of the strongest fears humans experience. Carl was free from such fears. One of the reasons for this was the way he had moved closer, not always through easy stages, to spiritual peace through his life.

During his last days, Carl frequently talked to his son about where he had been in the last minutes or hours. He spoke about seeing family (particularly his mother, Anna, and brother, Harold) and holding conversations with them at times when he seemed asleep to those in the room with him. The skeptical might dismiss this talk as dream or delusion. Others might see it in a different way: this was a time when he was a commuter.

Nurses aids from Society's Assets did an excellent job of keeping him clean and feeling physically fresh during his last weeks. Karl, Jr. arranged for a physician to tend to Carl at home, and other specialists assisted him in this period. Hospice workers kept him relatively pain-free. He had a harrowing cough for several weeks before the Dr. was brought in, and this was aleviated during his last weeks by the doctor's care. Carl's final passing was as gentle and as free from pain, stress, or fear as drifting into a nap. John Donne's poem, "A Valedicton: Forbidding Mourning," a poem Carl particularly liked, opens with the lines:

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
   And whisper to their souls to go. . .

Many virtuous men and women pass away in much less than a mild fashion. Carl was one who did.

Carl and Bernice had made arrangements for his cremation and burial years before. Bernice's parents repose in the military cemetery at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. She and Carl agreed that they would like to rest with them, with Carl and Bernice side by side. They wished for no local funeral or memorial service. Carl was buried in the military cemetery shown below.