The good & the bad in pencil.
On November 4, Peter's dad had a heart attack. Luckily, it was of the mild variety (mild heart attack is oxymoronic, if you ask me) and he's fine and back home and is feeling swell. We visited him in the cardiac ICU and it was the first time that I had visited someone in a hospital that I can recall. Peter's uncle was there and he said that he'd heard a lot about me and that it was nice to finally meet me. It was nice to meet him as well. He and Peter's dad talked about at home blood pressure monitors and electric circuit boards and how everyone their age seems to have a stent in their chest. We stayed for an hour and at the end, Peter's dad told Peter that he hadn't caused the heart attack by waking him up to bust his balls about Obama winning over McCain (Peter's dad ended up going to the hospital about a half an hour later, but he'd been having chest pains for a few days beforehand). It was said all jokey, but Peter looked at the ceiling and ran his hand through his hair like he does when he's processing, and his dad looked like a father who was trying to soothe his child.
On November 12, Connecticut officially started granting licenses to same sex couples. I work next door to City Hall and we received an E-mail in the morning that there would be a celebration going on next door and that perhaps we should plan accordingly, in case this celebration might cause us to be late for work. Since it was sent on the morning of the event, I don't see how that would help people considering they would already have to be at work in order to read the e-mail, but what do I know? I took a longer than usual morning break and stood on the outskirts of the crowd and made myself not cry, even when I saw all of the happy couples looking at each other and around them & even when I saw all of the other happy uncoupled people blowing bubbles and holding balloons & even when I saw all of the children bundled up and running around and I realized that by the time they're my age all of this hoopla won't make any sense to them, because by then everyone will have fucking gotten over it. But yeah, there's something about being close to so much warranted joy that makes me want to cry like a baby.
I woke up on November 13th and checked my cell phone and saw a few messages from my mom and from my brother and I knew right away that something was wrong with my dad. He'd gone to the emergency room the night before because he was having trouble breathing and after he was there a while, he became less coherent and stopped breathing altogether. They hooked him up to a ventilator and sedated him while they tried to figure out why and because they had to put a tube down his throat. I left work at noon and Peter and I drove out to New Britain. I walked into his room in the ICU and the doctor was talking to my brothers and Sara, the mother of two of Yusef's children, who I hadn't seen in years. My father was hooked up to all sorts of machines and still sedated, but I could tell, and Peter told me later that he felt the same, that he was all there. So, the five of us watched him sleep. We got in the nurses' way and everyone but me ate hospital cafeteria food. We laughed a lot and told stories about growing up, and when his body would have tiny seizures, we told him it was okay. We stayed for about 5 hours and I'll be going back tomorrow. They're going to try and wake him up and lower how much breathing the ventilator is doing for him. My biggest fear, as far back as I can remember, is losing my father, and though logically, I understand that it has to happen one day, please not now.