Years of suffering and months of struggling with the decision to end it had brought them here: To a bright white living room where three of their children lay side by side by side, waiting to die.
Les and Celeste Chappell loved the children, of course, and the thought of letting them go was excruciating, but holding on was just as painful.
The children Christopher, 20; Elizabeth, 19; and James, 15 had been ravaged by a ruthless neurological disorder that, over the years, had stolen their ability to see and to swallow, to move and to remember. Life support was only prolonging the inevitable.
So one Thursday in July, at their home in Springville, Utah, the parents braced themselves for what would become a long weekend of death.
The three children were made comfortable with morphine and lorazepam, a sedative used to control seizures, and their parents started to pray.
Then they stopped the tube-feedings and watched their children, one by one, silently slip away.