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It started with my high school friend Frank's Facebook page. He announced he was leaving Portland, Maine to go to Augusta, Georgia to help take care of a dying friend, and asked for donations for his hospice care.

The friend is Keith Griffith, 53. Within a few days of Frank's announcement, a GoFundMe page appeared and the donations started to trickle in. Dying is an expensive business in America, and doing it without asking for help is out of reach for many of us.

Here I stand, hand out, needing your help. My cancer has returned and I need your help covering some expenses. $150 can get me an in-home visit by a nurse. $500 buys lots of medications. $4800 gets me a month of hospice. You can see how every donation adds up and helps me directly. Please do what you can.

So far, Keith has raised a little over $9,000 of the $28,800 he needs to pay for his estimated hospice bill. If you should feel so inclined, please go contribute.

But that's not the point of this story. The point is, we've taken the very first steps toward creating a society where people like Keith can concentrate on living out their final days in comfort and peace, instead of running the numbers and wondering if he shared just enough of his plight to reach his financial goal.

If this election's about anything, it's about the fact that here, in the richest country in the world, a dying man still has to hold a virtual bake sale to pay for much-needed medical care. We've made a start. Hopefully, we'll finish it. One day, we'll tell children stories about a time when sick people had to publicly beg for help and they'll look wide-eyed and say, "Really?"

Don't let the loons take away that progress.