This isn't the diary I was planning to write an hour ago. In fact, bear with me, I'm pretty overcome w/emotion right now so please understand if this is a bit mumble jumble and even fluffier than usual from me.
I spent today working on campaigns...that's what I do. Tweeting, facebooking, doing some blog outreach...making plans for facebook ads, last minute GOTV push etc. Roomie got paid yesterday so after doing a few hours of work I dropped him off at home and went grocery shopping.
Came home to find an email from a fellow kiddie pooler that didn't make any sense. Something nice and mushy but with a sadness in it that alarmed me. Sent a DM and then found out that our own grndrush, one of the original kiddie poolers has slipped into a coma. He was diagnosed with brain cancer about a year ago. I remember the day I got that email, the intense hope he felt about his chances and how thankful I was to remember that he lives in Canada so this wouldn't bankrupt him.
Over the last year he and I exchanged emails on a regular basis. He always made sure to ask about the campaigns I was working on, always there to give a word of encouragement when I was down and to share in the fun. I always made sure to ask how he was feeling and no matter how bad he might have really been feeling, he always had a positive spin to put it on and he always ended his emails by reminding me that while social media is only a small piece of the puzzle the work we all do to help elect more and better Dems is important, not just here in the US but around the world.
Now Keith lays in a coma in Canada and I'm told he probably won't make it through the night. I struggle to express what I'm really thinking and feeling but as I sit here trying to write this I keep coming back to one of the first phone conversations we ever had, shortly before the HCR vote back in January.
He called just to say hi and pass some time. We started talking about heathcare reform, because let's face it, that's what political addicts were talking about at the time and he was very forceful in predicting that even if it eventually passed that what was being passed was but a starting point.
He was right. We have some aspects of health insurance reform (it's not really health care reform after what I saw today but that's a diary for someone else to hopefully write tonight) but it was only a starting point. All year long we've heard the GOP candidates campaign on the fact that they are going to get elected and their #1 priority is to repeal health care reform. We simply can't let that happen.
So tonight I write this diary in tears but with hope and renewed energy for the last 7 days of this election cycle. Please, for Keith, for all our friends and not more than a few thousand Kossacks in desperate need, please Get Out The Vote! This is a fight we just can't lose.