Whether you think tweeting from a hospital bed is an invasion of privacy or not, this journey of a son holding his mother’s hand during her final journey is heartfelt and moving.

ByDavid Wessel

Scott Simon, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition, is tweeting from the hospital bedside of his mother, Patricia Lyons Simon Newman Gilband, as she approaches death — and has drawn 1.2 million followers to a moving, occasionally funny and very 21st century chronicle of one of life’s universal experiences, the death of a parent.

One Tweet posted on his feed reads “I am getting a life’s lesson about grace from my mother in the ICU. We never stop learning from our mothers, do we?”

I just realized: she once had to let me go into the big wide world. Now I have to let her go the same way.

— Scott Simon (@nprscottsimon) July 28, 2013

ICU seems to be staffed by good, smart young docs who think they know everything, and wise RN’s who really do.
— Scott Simon (@nprscottsimon) July 28, 2013

When my mother woke briefly I sang her My Best Girl. She replied w/ You Are the Sunshine of My Life. Broadway in the ICU.

— Scott Simon (@nprscottsimon) July 28, 2013

If we only truly realized how little time we have..,
— Scott Simon (@nprscottsimon) July 28, 2013

Mother asks, “Will this go on forever?” She means pain, dread. “No.” She says, “But we’ll go on forever. You & me.” Yes.

— Scott Simon (@nprscottsimon) July 28, 2013

Tried to buy coffee for family w/ a mother in ICU too. Barista overheard, refused my card. “Your money’s no good here.”
— Scott Simon (@nprscottsimon) July 27, 2013

What is the idea behind deep fried onion rings in a hospital cafeteria?

— Scott Simon (@nprscottsimon) July 26, 2013

I am getting a life’s lesson about grace from my mother in the ICU. We never stop learning from our mothers, do we?

— Scott Simon (@nprscottsimon) July 25, 2013