Back in February of this year my father in law went into cardiac arrest and then was in a coma for almost a week before he finally died.

In the beginning of course I hoped he would get better. He was one of my favorite men and one of my favorite people. He taught me how to mow a lawn. The grass was still wet from the day before and I kept slipping on it, but instead of taking over and saying maybe I wasn’t strong enough he said, “You have to push harder.”

He went some period of time without breathing, but we weren’t sure how long. He had been watching the Republican debates right before his cardiac arrest, so naturally we blamed Trump.

The doctors were able to get his heart working again, but not his brain.

He slowly seemed to be improving at first. Very slowly. He was able to breathe mostly on his own, but he wasn’t waking up. We had hope.

They ran a bunch of tests and told us that basically the best we could hope for was for him to have the mental capacity of a two year old. He wouldn’t have wanted that, but choosing death is always hard. It’s especially hard when you haven’t slept for almost a week and people are fighting.

The hope for him to get better turned into a hope for him to die. Positive signs became upsetting. We knew how badly damaged his brain was.

We “pulled the plug” and waited about four hours before he died.

We did not celebrate on election day, since the guy who killed my father in law won.

We did not celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas. My wife, mother in law, and I did discuss how what was happening to Carrie Fisher sounded a lot like what happened to my father in law. While everyone was celebrating her being in “stable condition,” we were more pessimistic.

Sometimes “stable condition” is worse than someone dying. Sometimes “stable condition” just means drawing out the pain of losing someone.