Dimas Medeiros Costa died Tuesday afternoon in Room 212 of the Philip Hulitar Hospice Center in Providence, surrounded by all five of his children and most of his 11 grandchildren.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. It was a celebration of a life, strangely joyous as much as sad. It was quite a thing.

I was there as one of the spouses. I married into the Costa family, which I knew long before Tuesday is bound by duty, loyalty and love, sirens calling them together this week for a goodbye that we all will remember for the rest of our lives.

The timing was all Dimas’, though he was largely unconscious since his latest downward health spiral began with an emergency room visit Friday night. In addition to his memory challenges, he had been fighting bouts of pneumonia. He would have been 90 in June.

The Costa family’s three-day vigil would not have been possible without the remarkable guidance of the caring professionals with Hope Hospice & Palliative Care Rhode Island, the second oldest hospice in the country. What honorable work these brave people do, not only to help people die with dignity and without pain but also to help families understand and even welcome death.

When it is over, they open a window to release the departed.

I was especially struck by doctors there on rounds, including students from the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. I am so impressed that young people would choose to focus their professional lives on helping people in this way.

I still find it hard to imagine that my father-in-law was able to time his death before his assembled family, but it does seem as if that’s what happened. It appeared he gave time and notice for everyone to come, some, over days, from across the country, and, at the very end, from the reaches of the hospice building, for a final gathering and goodbye.

Even though he wasn’t speaking and his eyes were shut, there were indications he knew what was going on.

How appropriate it was for Dimas Costa to leave life in the company of the five children who were so important to him.

The son of immigrants from Portugal, he attended Brown University on the G. I. Bill. Spending money on his children’s education was his biggest splurge in life. Two of his children and five of his grandchildren followed him to Brown.

He moved his young family to Brazil for a number of years, so that they could live in a country that speaks his family’s native language. Some of the goodbyes Tuesday were in Portuguese.

By Tuesday, when all of the family had arrived, his breathing patterns began to change, and his children sensed a new phase of the process. Nurses and doctors explained that everyone does it differently. Like with birth, each death is distinct.

The change that finally brought everyone to his room and bedside was when he opened his eyes. He wasn’t looking at anything in the room. A nurse said later she thinks this is a time when patients seem to be looking at where they are going.

His life ended with a series of deep breaths.

Some of his five children said later, with some wonder, that they had each counted five deep breaths.

And then the window was opened.

It was the first time in days, it occurred to me, that anyone in that room seemed happy.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com