It Hurts, But It Kills

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.