Respecting a Woman's Last Dying Wish

We had responded to a residential home for a 87 year old woman feeling lethargic. The first thought that crossed my mind on hearing the nature of the call was, "Really? A 87 year old not feeling well, what are the odds?"
As we walked into the house, I asked the personal caregiver if the patient had a DNR. The caregiver said yes and directed us to an upstairs bedroom. As soon as we saw our patient (she must have weighed about 80 pounds and had the look of someone that had been withered away by cancer), I asked the caregiver to go and immediately find the DNR. We were going to need it.
According to the personal caregiver our patient had been fighting cancer for several years. It had recently metastasised and the woman's health had started really deteriorating.
My patient was laying in a hospital bed sitting up slightly. She was guppy breathing. As one of my crew members headed out of the room to go and see what was taking the caregiver so long at finding the DNR, I quickly checked for a radial pulse. Not finding one I searched for a carotid pulse. She had a weak one but it was there.
As my engineer walked in the room I turned to him to explain what I had going on with the patient. We turned our attention back and watched this helpless weak old woman take her last breath. Not wanting to do anything contrary to the woman's wishes I loudly asked "... Where the heck is that DNR order ???..." In the absence of a valid DNR we have no choice but to work up the full arrest.
Because this personal caregiver was unorganized I had to start compressions. Thankfully, after about 45 seconds, the DNR was found and presented to me. Once it was determined that it was valid, my resuscitation efforts stopped. We then replaced the covers on the body and left her so that she appeared to be sleeping.
The nice thing about the DNR is it allows the patient to determine what they want done to them in just this scenario. For those of us in Firefighting/the Emergency Medical Services field we generally don't want to go through what we do for someone in full arrest. We'd rather be let go.
I'm glad we found that DNR.... still sad to see a life coming to an end. But looking around the room at various photos, it appeared to be a well lived 87 years... a person can find comfort in that.