Possibly TMI,

This time of year always has me thinking of death. In the last few years my dad as well as my aunt and an uncle (not my real aunt, but still like one) have died. Totally unexpectedly.

My mother spent years trying to tell me to make things right with my dad but I never did. I couldn't. It seems to me now that I probably should have but what seems right now isn't always what should have been.

With "the holidays" looming in the near future I find myself thinking a lot about family and what it really means. My friends are my family. I don't come from one of those families that is really close. Really it seems that if we weren't all tied together by some social structure, no one would actually talk to each other (this excludes my mother and grandmother). I get the feeling that none of them like each other very much but continue to go through the motions because its the "right" thing to do.

My dad wasn't really someone I would call family toward the end. The last six years, in fact. I didn't refer to him as my dad in that time and couldn't have cared less about him then. Now, years after his death, I have found a sort of peace with the relationship I had with him. I will call him my dad now because when he wasn't on drugs, that is what he was.

People often ask if we were close when I say that he is dead. A word of advise to everyone, don't ask people that. How close I was to him when he died doesn't really change the way I felt about his death. It still sucks sometimes. Mostly this time of year. I start to think a lot about my own mortality and how I will leave people behind.

Its easier to say that I don't want to burn bridges and hold grudges now that I am a little older and have experienced never making amends. It is not something I think I will do again.

My aunt also died around this time last year. I remember the message my mother left on my phone. I was sitting at my desk at work when I heard it. It is never easy to hear. I went home early from work that day. Actually, I think it was almost one year to the day....

The one thing I always seem to remember about people when they die, better than anything else, is their laugh. I have no real memories of my dad. I have memories where I know he must have been there too but nothing specific about him, except for his laugh. Diane's laugh was one no one could miss or forget.

I know this entry is a little different from the rest but its something I have spent a lot of time thinging about. More than anything it helps keep the bad things in perspective. I may have been friend dumped, had a wheel stolen (more on that later) but it could always be worse.