How I spent election day

(I wrote this earlier today based on a writing class prompt)

I like to vote in person. Since Andy and I got married, we always voted together. He liked going in person too. And despite being a musical genius, he always needed help figuring out how to work whatever system was in the voting booth. So even though we were separated, we planned to vote for Kamala together in our little town hall in Grand Isle, VT.

He was in a lot of pain as he recovered from throat cancer, but the doctors told him he was getting better, and that they’d caught all the cancer. We never imagined we would spend election day in the hospital. We never imagined that while we thought he was recovering from cancer that it was spreading everywhere, and that just two days before the election, I would take him to the ER where they would tell us that he had cancer in his lungs, ribs, sacrum and liver.

We had made a plan to vote, but we failed to execute on it.

The doctors never gave any rough timeline or prognosis but I knew it was bad.

I called and emailed friends and family who I knew would want to see him and people started flying from Los Angeles to Vermont. We spent election day with our friends Tom (aka SpongeBob), and his wife Jill (aka Karen, Plankton’s wife); Jillinda and Joe (members of Andy and Tom’s band the Hi-Seas), and Jim, who had spearheaded multiple fundraising events for Democrats.

We were hopeful early in the day, at least for our country. We spent time with Andy laughing and telling stories, and then as the returns came in, the mood shifted.

I knew Andy was dying. I was too numb to think about our country dying too.

Andy went a lot faster than our democracy. He died fifteen days after the election.