It was Glen Wideman’s last concert.

With candles lit at the front of the silent chapel on Thursday afternoon, the famed Scottish-Canadian tenor John McDermott filled the room with the quiet, gentle lull of “Amazing Grace.”

It’s the hymn Wideman asked to be played at his funeral, in a letter his daughters found folded in a drawer after he died of cancer on Sunday. He was 74.

But Wideman would have never dreamed the man he adored, whose haunting, simple melodies he raised his family on, would be the one to sing it.

A devoted fan of McDermott’s, Wideman had been attending his concerts for two decades.

“My dad just loved him. He found solace in his music over the last 20 years,” said daughter Kim Severin. “I can’t think of a time when he wasn’t part of our lives.”

At Christmas and for birthdays, there were always tickets to concerts. Listening to McDermott’s music became a family affair, and in the end one of the last joys they shared together.

After Wideman had a “catastrophic” stroke in 1993, leaving him paralyzed on his left side, his family knew they were living on borrowed time.

At an Oakville concert in 2008, Wideman was unable to get to the meet-and-greet with McDermott. But when the singer met Severin and heard what a huge fan her father was, he asked where Wideman was sitting.

“He followed me into the audience and walked through all these people and just embraced my dad,” Severin said. It was one of the highlights of his life.

When their father was diagnosed with cancer and given six weeks to live, Severin emailed the singer on behalf of herself and her sister, Julie Navarro, desperate to make their father’s face light up one last time.

They offered McDermott $1,000 and then some if he would visit Wideman in the hospice where he would live out his final days.

“Within six hours of sending that email he called me on my cell,” Severin said. McDermott didn’t want the money, but he would come. She was floored.

Arrangements were made for Tuesday, but as his health rapidly declined Wideman’s family told the singer it might be better to call it off.

But McDermott insisted, saying he’d rearrange his schedule to come on Monday, as the daughters struggled to keep the surprise a secret from their father, hoping it would lift his spirits.

But on Sunday morning, Wideman slipped away. When they told McDermott, he asked if they would allow him to sing at the funeral.

McDermott wanted to honour a family man who enjoyed old songs and the simple things. “It’s people like Glen who really gave me my career,” he said.

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Wideman grew up in Toronto, where he worked as a proofreader for a printing company.

With his wife, Carol, who he loved for more than 50 years, they raised their two girls in Mississauga.

They lived around the record player, memorizing words to all the classics — Neil Diamond and Johnny Cash.

“When we were growing up, music was a huge part of my dad’s life,” Severin said.

And Wideman was always singing. After the stroke, he was relentless. He would wake up singing, much to the annoyance of his sweetheart, his daughters said.

In the letter he wrote to his girls — addressed to “my darling daughters” — he said he wanted them to celebrate, not grieve, his life in the end, surrounded by music.

“Dad, if you only knew how we’ve topped this for you,” Severin said of McDermott’s appearance. “It’s helping us get through all this, because what better way to show our love for him.”

There’s a song McDermott wrote, “The Old Man,” that could have been penned for Wideman — the “perfect man who led an ordinary life” — and for his family, now in need of comforting.

McDermott sang the tune on Thursday, the Wideman girls wrapping their arms around each other for the final notes.

The tears have all been shed now / We’ve said our last goodbye / His soul’s been blessed / And he’s laid to rest / And it’s now I feel alone / He was more than just a father / A teacher, my best friend / He can still be heard / In the tunes we shared / When we play them on our own