John & João

On This Date In History - ...............................President John F. Kennedy Was Assassinated (1963)
The assassination of John F. Kennedy while he was riding in a presidential motorcade in Dallas was a seminal event in American history. Although two official investigations have concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the culprit, the assassination is still the subject of widespread speculation and has spawned a number of conspiracy theories.

A decidedly traumatic and pivotal event in anyone's life is always the passing of a dear one, whether a father, a mother, a child or a lover... A leader or commander-in-chief as well...
Today is also, for me personally, a date synonymous with much chagrin as it is, day for day, exactly eight months ago that I witnessed my father's departure from this life. It happened right before me too - and he wound up, for the following six days, here:


And then, for the six days and five nights that followed, I was battling the establishment to gain the right to keep my father alive on the respirator. All I wanted was to buy some time - to allow relatives who were located farther away to have at least a chance to see Dad alive one last time - his heart beating still...
They objected every day - they wanted to force my hand and my mother's into taking a decision asap - and the only decision was to unplug him and let him go... This from the same establishment that kept an older patient, female and wealthy, hooked to a respirator for MONTHS - when her situation was just as dire as my father's was...
To boot, the picture above was found in a PDF document issued by the same hospital on the web - it shows a patient whose resemblance to my father is quite uncanny.
Unauthorized pictures of the patients that you are eager to discard, on top of everything, Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur...? Tut-tut...
I should sue.
I probably will.