Friday, January 23rd, 2004 | 19:51
Something I've been meaning to post for a while.

This will be an entry of housecleaning, of sorts. Absolutely no new content. Only new to you.
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Last night
I can feel the formaldehyde sinking into my brain. The tar, unfortunately, goes straight to my stomach.
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The Sunday I drove down to Toronto with my father and brother to visit my grandfather in the hospital. I talked to him a while and then scribbled notes to myself on a pad of Post-Its, sitting on the adjacent bed while others responded to his barely-lucid mumblings. We drove back to Ottawa that night and he died the next day.

Biting the air, looking for the words the cancer and the eventual stroke had hidden from him.

I am in awe of death. I told myself I would be able to deal but now I hold the entire event at arms' length because any closer would definitely be too much.

The image of the pure gold wedding ring around his quickly dying finger.

The fluorescent light across the room from him is creating a metaphor so blunt, I almost don�t want to write it down.

I almost cried once but I stopped myself and took it like a man; something for which I am wholly ashamed.

Grandson-in-law? Loudmouthed bastard? Disturber of the Solemn Misery.
He has the volume of�


�Mena was here until 4am this morning. She wants the graveyard shift again tonight.�
My father said it, completely unaware of the macabre pun he had just made about his own father.


They say the IV isn�t hooked up, but the meter keeps counting down.

The sign on the door says masks are mandatory but everyone has removed his or hers by this point. I entertain the Kevorkian thought that maybe he�ll catch something and finally be able to rest a while.
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chest

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