AUSTIN, Texas, Mar. 31, 2005 — I'd agreed to play a casual tennis game with some ladies today. Before I knew my dad would be at the hospital. I call and cancel that. I think he may get out and, in any case, I need to be there to see doctors and such. My hip hurts and my guts are grinding. Yesterday with Dad in the hospital has make me sick. I'm such a wimp. I go early, before eight, to Dad's, pick up his paper, check things, go to the hospital. Dad is waiting around. He is getting an IV for low sodium. They finally give some pills for his BP, some Potassium pills because that is low. He's cleared only a little from his bowels and wants an enema. He wants his feet washed.

The nurse does that. (He hasn't been able to bend over and wash them. He volunteerd me but the nurse does it.) I wander off for a while and she gives him an enema. That works a bit. I go off for lunch, hoping not to miss the doctors. I do miss one of them. He has forgotten her name and doesn't think it's the doctor he saw yesterday but the nurse says it is. His friend Maja visits. (Dad says he doesn't visit the hospital when people are in it because they are divided into two groups: (1) those too sick for visitors; and (2) those too well for visitors. However, he likes Maja's visit. I call her the 'good daughter.' She doesn't object. The other doctor visits. He says Dad can go home after consuming something by mouth to further his evacuation. The cat scan shows nothing to worry about. The xray this morning shows improvement over last night's as far as material in the bowel. He gets lunch. He gets junk to drink to make him go. He drinks it. The nurse shift changes. He tells the new one he wants to go home. He gets dressed, makes an attempt at combing his hair and his discharge comes through about four.

I get the car and take him home. I get his mail, take care of a few things for him. He says I should go home and rest. And I feel like I need to do it.

We have tickets to see the (free) Elie Wiesel lecture tonight. So we get ready and go to that. There is a huge crowd. Ballet Austin has helped bring it as a part of the Light: The Holocaust and Humanity Project. I wish that there hadn't been a picture of all these religious leaders on the front page of The New York Times today announcing their opposition to a march for Gay Pride in Jerusalem. I don't think being religious trumps being tolerant. I don't think being a victim of intolerance allows you to be intolerant. But here are these conservative Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Orthodox whatever guys in all their regalia saying gay people will desecrate Jerusalem. On other pages of the newspaper, their followers are happily killing one another. Mr. Wiesel gives a good lecture. He says it's fine to oppose intolerance. But tolerance is not what he seeks for himself or others. Respect is the key. He doesn't imply that his harrowing experience in the worst nightmare of the last century trumps others' pain. He is soft-spoken. He doesn't pretend to have answers. He doesn't even know how he and others emerged sane from the camps.

We go by Jeffrey's on the way home. Eat, greet, see people we know. I don't feel so hot, though. I think a glass of wine will ease the nervous grip in my gut. It doesn't. At home I try to relax, I succeed a little and I sleep finally.