Exploration Seven: Lydia Freudenberg

1. While reading through part of Charter 6 in A Call to Write and making my way through the section, Encounter with Public Documents, I found it amazing how public document truly rule our life. They allow us to make choices; wills, marriage certificates, contracts. They state facts; applications, government documentation. They allow our world to go round because nothing is really true unless it's documented, and to a point, that is almost frightening.

2. Because I found the section, Encounter with Public Documents most interesting, I believe it is only appropriate to write about a story from that section. I have always been a one hundred percent believer in gay marriage, so I found the story, From My Own Country very interesting. The purpose of this story was for Doctor Abraham Verghese, who is operating on Ed Maupin, (a very sick man suffering from AIDS) to show how if there is no legal or written documentation involved, your voice becomes silent. I believed the story was effective, specifically when Verghese announced how Ed's partner, Bobby, who has been in love with Ed since he was seven years of age and knows all of Ed's wishes, has no say in the decision of Ed's outcome. They are not legally married and so Ed's siblings take the matter into their own hands stating how, "We are his family. We are legally responsible for him." But Bobby is his family too, just not on paper, what a shame. Towards the end of the story, I really found it touchingly sad how Verghese writes, "Bobby kept sobbing, shaking his head as I talked, fat tears rolling off his eyes onto the ground, onto his chest. He felt he has betraying Ed. He could not deliver on his promise." I know Verghese feels guilty he made the situation political and how even though Bobby is so in love with Ed and knows Ed will die if he is not operated on, he loves Ed's wishes even more, and all he wants to do is make Ed happy. Bobby feels as though the siblings are saving Ed for their own happiness and Verghese feels like he is supporting Ed's siblings feelings. Bobby was ready to let go, his siblings were not.