Dax Shepard recalls the touching moment his dying father met his unborn child

Parenthood star, Dax Shepard and his fiancée, actress Kristen Bell, will welcome their first child this year. While the Shepard-Bell household will soon be filled with a lot of joy, the actor recently went through a tough time. He recently lost his father, Dave Robert Shepard, who lost his battle with cancer at the age of 62.

Shepard detailed the fun times, and the tough times he spent with his father during the last four months of his life. He wrote it all out in a Tumblr post on March 20.

He said he found out his father was ill in August, around the time he and Kristen Bell found out they were expecting. Although they are not married yet, he refers to the actress as his wife in the post.

“Whoever was writing my life couldn’t figure out which storyline they wanted to tell, and decided to tell them all at once,” he wrote.

Shepard’s dad died in December on New Year’s Eve. He won’t get to meet his new grandchild physically, but Dax's future wife makes him forever grateful because she gave his dad a reason to smile one last time.

Recalling an unforgettable hospital visit, “At one point, and unbeknownst to both of us, my wife (Kristen Bell) walked into the room. She had flown in from LA without any warning. It was a surprise. It was an amazing, incredible, perfectly timed surprise,” Shepard wrote, according to E! News.

“She lifted her shirt up and [my dad] put his hand on her swollen stomach. He left it there for the better part of an hour. He was smiling from ear to ear, sitting contently, unable to put together a sentence, but still capable of connecting to the new family member we were creating. He wasn’t going to make it to the birth, but that didn’t get in the way of him meeting the new baby. It was an emotional and triumphant moment. One I will never forget.”

He added, “If I live to be a thousand, I will still be in debt to my wife for giving him that one last thrill.”

Dax Shepard, Tumblr