Muhammad Ali rang the ‘final bell’ on his life as he lay on life support after his bedside hospital machine sounded ‘ding ding ding’ before his death. The boxing legend’s daughter Rasheda revealed how, as they watched his life ebb away, the family’s sadness was broken by fits of laughter while at his bedside.
“The dialysis bell went ‘ding, ding, ding’, ” she told People magazine.We all kind of stopped. I thought, ‘Somebody’s ringing a boxing bell.’ I looked at him instinctively and said, ‘Get your ass up’ Everybody started laughing. And I said, ‘Dad did that. He was looking for a way to make the mood more comical and stop us crying. I felt he rang that bell on purpose, and then we all burst in to tears again.”As the 74-year-old battled for his life by late Friday afternoon the family’s realised they were losing him.
His wife, Lonnie, had managed to fly most of Ali’s nine children and some of his adult grandchildren to his hospital bed in Phoenix, Arizona.