@somemom , it happened even faster for my father. He passed away the very first night that he was at home under hospice care. I think he was just waiting to get out of the hospital and back home before he let go.
My MIL was in hospice for 15 months. Stopping the chemo and hospital visits did wonders for her health.
eta: Unfortunately, FIL never got the hospice mindset. He didn’t want to let her go, and until the end was trying to talk her into getting a second/third/fourth opinion and start back on treatment.
@NEPatsGirl I love the aspect of hospice that treats the whole family, but my mother is the bristly type and we don’t see her accepting help or counseling from the social worker. We’ve been trying to get her to seek counseling ever since my dad’s Parkinson’s got really bad about a year ago, but no dice! She needs it, but won’t do it!
@b1ggreenca, My mother is extremely independent–she lives in her house alone at age 94!–and she refused any help for a long time. My father started to decline about 6-8 weeks before he died. I knew that things had changed when, during a phone call, I said , “That’s it, I’m coming down whether you like it or not” and her reply was, instead of the usual oh, no, we’re fine “Great, how soon can you get here?” I expected it to be a very hard sell to get her to accept visiting nurse support–my father’s doctor had tried–but she did that too, and she really liked the nurse who came to talk things over with her and my father. At that visit he was running a fever, and he landed in the hospital for a week, and then it was time for hospice. The same VNA organization was the home hospice organization, and the same nurse was our hospice nurse, so it was seamless. I thought she would have a fit at someone broaching funeral arrangements with her when my father came home, but she didn’t.
I am quite sure that she would not have accepted counseling for herself, nor do I think she needed it. Support, yes. Our nurse hit just the right tone with her.
@somemom similar thing with my FIL. Left the hospital on Sunday and died on Tuesday. The hospice people were wonderful, telling us what to expect and what we might see happen. On Tuesday morning it was obvious he was declining rapidly. I was with him so called the siblings to tell them they should come now. We all live in the same town, and we all had been with him daily at different times of the day. My SIL tells me she has an appointment and would be there later; I explained she might want to arrive soon.
PS, she goes to her appointment and arrived after he died. She was able to sit with him after, but I know it bothers her that she didn’t get to say goodbye.
Isn’t weird how people just don’t “hear” what you are saying?
Interestingly, I has asked the hospice nurses when Dad began and they guessed maybe a month or two, so we began setting up for a multi month involvement, but then the morning he died, the nurse said maybe more like two weeks than two months. I was literally on the phone dealing with arrangements and talking to hospice about adjusting the meds down so he would wake up when DH came to get me as his breathing changed, a small group of us were with him, and my DD was flying in from out of town, but missed him due to a flight delay, had her flight been on time, I would have been at the airport 
One thing I will share, part of my calls was looking into final arrangements, I talked to a local funeral place, asked how it worked, got a price quote around $800 for cremation. He died that evening, I called them, went in the next day, bill of $2500. When I mentioned the phone call, they redid the paperwork for the “phone special” that I had discussed, but not yet done paperwork for, pretty sleazy in my opinion, but I tell everyone I can, because we should all pay that 1/3 phone special price.
My dad went into at home hospice in June, and lasted until January 10… a good chunk of my pregnancy with my youngest daughter.
What made it bearable for us was the mindset: as long as we weren’t worried about trying to prolong dad’s life, we could keep him pain free. The fear of addiction to strong drugs wasn’t an issue, so they could ramp up the meds as necessary to ensure that he wasn’t in pain. That was important to us.
Also, mom was told that when dad went, she was to call hospice first thing. They were as amazing then as they had been throughout the process. They called the coroner and took care of everything; mom just had to call us.
They made it so much easier for us to say goodbye to dad, and will have my eternal thanks.