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I don't have much love for the month of November. It seems like the first of the month starts out gloomy and a gloomy cloud hangs around for the rest of the month. This month will be six years since my dad died. It will also mark one year without my grandma Blumer. You know how when a loved one dies you look for anything with that person in it, photos, videos, social media posts, etc., but you're looking for their likeness. You're looking for their face. You know what destroys me the most? Voicemail. They say that when a loved one dies the first thing you forget is the sound of their voice. When my dad died I still had a voicemail message from him on my phone. It wasn't even that old. It was from the weekend before he died. He was reminding me that his band, Remedy, was playing at the St. Joseph Riverboat Casino. He wondered if Ashley and I would be there. (We totally were, and they were great!) When I remembered that the message was in my inbox I almost froze on the spot. It was a chance for me to hear my dad's voice again. It was something I thought was gone forever. Which was such a stupid thing to think, really, because videos with him talking in them existed. It wasn't like I would never hear it again. However, the voicemail was a personalized message. It was meant only for me. Except for Ashley, nobody else even knew it existed. It felt heavy. I always knew it was there. I listened to it so much that I worried my iPhone would automatically delete it because it knew I had heard it already. I had a lot of moments where I would just listen to it alone in the car. I would make up a scenario where we were going to see him that coming weekend. Honestly, I was miserable. That's a weird thing to experience. While the message, his voice, made me happy, it really wasn't helping me grieve. I wasn't dealing with losing my dad, not really. I just never wanted to lose that piece of him that was mine. So, I deleted it. I'm not making light of it. That little action was as hard as signing his death certificate. I fought myself so hard that I cried for days after. (I realize there is a Deleted Messages folder on iPhone, but I also cleared it from there.) It wasn't healthy to keep that weight hanging around my neck, or in my pocket, so to speak. I had to do it, and even though it hurt to my bones, I knew it was the right call. I started to feel better. Not right away though. It really took some time, but I didn't feel like anything was holding me down. Now it kind of feels bad to think of it that way. What a weird, vicious circle. Worse yet, I have the same situation with a voicemail from my grandma Blumer. It's from a few months before she died. Again, the message was meant only for me. It's really hard to listen to it because you can hear how much pain she was in at the time. I know I'm going to have to do the same with this message, but I'm going to need more time with it. See, this one hits in an entirely different way. When my dad died, Ashley and I weren't even married yet. I hadn't even proposed (even though he was the first one to know that I was going to). We hadn't bought our house yet. And Opal wasn't even a thought. With Grandma it was a little different. She was at the wedding. She had an opinion of the neighborhood where we bought our house. She heard directly from Ashley and I that we were expecting. She was excited for us. She was happy about our future. It's hard for me to delete this one because I miss her so much. Not that I didn't miss my dad, but I was closer to him. Heck, I worked right next to him. It's not that I wasn't close with Grandma. I certainly was, but they lived an hour away from home and we didn't make the drive very often. I never lived with her. Most of the memories I have of my grandma always seem so long ago. I suppose that's a true sign of getting older. I want to keep this message. I want to, but I know I shouldn't. Because it only took once listening through it to bring tears to my eyes, and I've kind of been in a funk since then. Having had my dad and my grandma die in the month of November is hard. Like I said, I don't have much love for this month. However, I want to remember them during this time. So, if you have a story, please share it with us. At least then I'll know I'm not the only one who can recall the sound of their voices. 
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We shared a room when we were kids.
Jumped bed to bed because the floor was lava. We made pillow forts and haunted houses when we had bunk beds. Ghostbusters and Ninja Turtles. Wrestle mania, Brother. We had robots on border wallpaper around the middle of the room. Mom used to yell at us to "GO. TO. SLEEP!" Laughing at stupid jokes and farts. Remember when we’d throw that old football pillow across the room at each other in the dark? Remember the owl that nested in the big tree outside our window? You would get sick sometimes and couldn’t breathe. That was scary. So sometime Mom or Dad would sleep in our room with us. Then, when I was going into 4th grade, you into 3rd, we moved… We got a bigger room! Same color yellow. More room for toys, desks, and whatever. Your army men we tied to plastic bags and pretended they were parachutes. They'd float to the ground from our second story window. Neighborhood kids slept over. Bill, who never went home. We got a big stereo for Christmas that one year. No Doubt, Tragic Kingdom, All-4-One, Buckshot LeFonque. Music filled our souls and every corner of our room. But the street light was always too bright in our window. And there was traffic all night. The sounds and lights of emergency vehicles was scary at first. But to this day, when I need to find a peaceful place in my head, I think about our room and being curled up on my bed; and gazing at the traffic light down the block. The last time we shared a room, I was almost in high school, and you had to leave with Mom. Our room was too big when you were gone. All the space we made for fun things felt cold and useless. My bad dreams came more often. I just wanted things back to normal; when we were kids and our knees had scabs on them. When night-time wasn’t scary because you were there with me. I didn’t want my own room even though at one point I might have said I did. Our house was too empty without our family. Our room wasn't crowded enough. We have always been close. I haven’t had to do anything alone. Ever. You are my best friend. I know it wasn’t always perfect. I know there are things I regret doing or saying. I can’t take any of it back. I hope you don’t resent me in any way, because this, better than anything, is what I remember about growing up. Sharing a room with you.  I'm probably like most people when it comes to finding something great to read. I use the Google machine, right? I like to see what is top selling. I like to see which categories people are reading most often. It gives me a sense of where the best reads are coming from. I also use my Kindle Fire a lot for this kind of research because of its ease-of-use. The Amazon book store practically does all the work for you. Digital is the way people are reading their books now. I get it. I like that I can carry 30 books with me anywhere I want to go to read them. I also like that I have access to them immediately, which is helpful if I'm reading a series. You know what I like even better than instant access to my must read list? I like reading a real book. Yep, paper cuts and split spines; curled covers and dog-eared pages. I like my favorite books with the old yellow highlighted lines and scrawled notes from past reads. I love the smell from fanning the pages of a book, and the feel of paper between my thumb and index finger. There is something special about turning the page to see what happens next that cannot be replaced by the swipe of a finger (at least not for me). My love for these things started when I was young. I would flip through the pages of Mom's Danielle Steel books before I could even read what was on the page. When I was in elementary school we had a book fair that would come every year. It was my favorite. New books that we didn't have in the school library would be there. The "If you liked _____, then you'll love _____." lists. The newest Goosebumps book. There were too many reason I loved this time of year, but it breaks down into 1 solid fact about me. I love books. It is a necessity, maybe a compulsion, for me to browse the book store. I feel at home there. I remember things about my childhood, or silly stories from the past whenever I'm there. Just ask my girlfriend how often I frequent the book store. I'm sure she will say that I spend too much time there. However, the time I spend now is a whole lot less than when we had a big chain store here in St. Joe. I really like the big chain stores. They have anything you want and the ability to get it for you, often at no extra cost. Don't get me wrong, I like the Ma & Pa shops too, but I'll get to that in a moment. The drag for me when I found out they were closing the big store was that it meant I had to accept that people were changing the way they read their books. I didn't like it. Everybody loves to read books the same way I do, or so I thought. Now, done and gone, I find myself still tied to the need to put something in my hands that won't loose power after hours of reading. (I read a lot on my Kindle.) We still have Hastings and that's great, but I find myself browsing the same shelves over and over again, and just...bored. So this is it. I'm going hunting. I'm going to start looking for those small shops, those Ma & Pa stores, to revive my love for finding treasures bound and stapled. I want to hold the stories that others have loved. This is my mission, so if you have any suggestions please comment, and I'll let you know what I find. |
AuthorI started blogging thinking that this is where I would review whatever media I felt like ranting about. It quickly changed direction. So this is my online diary. Comments are welcome. Archives
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