In one month, my dad will have been dead for 15 years. In two years, he’ll have been out of my life for as long as he was in it, which means that in three years, he’ll have been out of my life for longer than he was in it.
I turn 33 this year. In five years, I’ll finally be older than Rodger. When I was little, that was all I wanted and I couldn’t understand why I’d never catch up. Now that I will, turns out it’s not cool like I thought it would be.
I found out last night that you can undelete voicemails on the iPhone—every voicemail you delete actually gets saved until you delete it for good. Which is awesome; turns out I have three messages from Rodger. It’s typical stuff, nothing that you’d normally want saved for posterity. But at the same time, it’s nice. It’s his voice, and I can listen to it any time I want. (In theory. In reality, I don’t, because it turns me into a mess. And I prefer not being a mess. But eventually it’ll be nice.)
It’s also good that I’m a card hoarder. That happened after Dad died. Now pretty much every card I get gets saved—it’s funny; I even have things from people I’m not friends with anymore. But still, it’s mine and I have it. Because you never know when something’s the last thing you’ll get.
There’s a lot of petty nonsense in my life right now, and most of it’s annoying. And I’ve been made fun of a little bit for being annoyed by said nonsense. But what people don’t understand is that getting annoyed by dumb stuff is better than realizing all of the above two paragraphs. It’s better than thinking about how I’m 32 years old and half my family is dead. And it’s better than wondering about who will be next among the people I love. Because I don’t have the luxury of pretending that we’re all going to live forever.
Do I really care about stupid things? No. But I’m willing to pretend I do, because being annoyed is always better than being sad.
And even being sad is better than being devastated which is where I am today (and honestly, lately).
This is my least favorite time of year and as we get closer to my dad’s death day, I spiral a little bit (and this year is obviously worse than most). So please understand that when I’m mad, I’m not really mad. I’m just trying to balance out.
Sometimes the distractions of petty annoyances aren’t enough to keep the pain out. Sometimes, for one reason or another, like the time of year, a recent loss, you have to sit with it even when you don’t want to I’m sorry about all that. I wish I could help.