uglyreal

Per our calendar, our year ended 10 days ago.

Per our calendar, we begin a new year. We get a brand new start.

My mama moved her office last week, and she gets a new start.

That is a good thing. She deserves one.

It used to be my parents’ office. I can’t really call this office, that, anymore.

I’ve tried hard to have no feelings about that fact whatsoever, as, I try hard not to feel whatsoever. I’ve tried to have no feelings about this in particular, though, because moving the office is all about my mama and none about me.  And, the reason she is moving her office is that my daddy left her to deal with their office. So, in my opinion, she can move her office to Jupiter if she wants to.

I’ll rent the spaceship.

So, again, the office move is not about me. But, it is kinda like seeing their closet void of shirts…some things just take your breath, even if you don’t want them to. I know the shirts should go, I know the office should move, but something about losing the shirts and moving the office makes me feel like another piece of my daddy has been removed from existence.

Which is dumb. He removed himself from existence.

It only makes logical sense that his shirts and his office should follow.

But he left some things behind, and they are the things you don’t give away.

In moving the office, we had to clean out the office. Granted, I didn’t clean out much, but the day before moving day, I did find two desk calendars that I made for him–well, I didn’t create them; I just wrote all over them–behind a door in the file room. They were Christmas presents, and he used them, on his desk, in the years 1999 and 2002.

So, I snagged them…because I wasn’t quite ready to let them go. One was themed, “When Do I Love You?” The other was full of things I remembered, things that made me happy, and things that I learned from him.

I threw them in the back of my car, and I pulled them out a couple of days ago, and I read them.

And then I had the big melt-down.

Because this is the problem with keeping the stuff that gives you back your memories: they give you back life as it should be, and not as life is.

They hold the life you remember; they remind you of the life you lost.

They make you smile—through torrential tears.

They make you angry because they give you back that piece of yourself you know you will never have again, but only for a very short while.

They make you wonder why he couldn’t have just read over those calendars on the day he left the office to come home and leave the Earth. They make you wonder if they could have reminded him of all he would leave behind and if those reminders could have made him stay.

They make you wonder if he ever knew just how much those words written on those calendars were still so, so true.

And they make you feel like you just didn’t love him enough.

Calendars mark time, our days, our schedule, our commitments, our special days.

These calendars marked all of the unique, precious things I cherished about my daddy, the things that made him more than my daddy.

These were the things that made him, him.

They are the things that empty closets and new offices can’t erase.

These are the calendars that hold my memories.

These are the real things that are left behind.