“Make sure you take care of yourself,”

It’s officially been a year since the last time my dad called.

A year since the last time I heard his voice.

And it’s so hard to write this. I feel like my chest is going to cave in. The phone call was only about 4 mins long. I still have the call logged on my phone and I make sure it doesn’t get pushed off.

I use to get so annoyed when my dad called. Cause he’d always say the same thing. But he did also always ask how I was doing, I just hated telling him if something was wrong cause he was a massive worrier. I firmly believe if he was still here during this pandemic he would lose his shit. So I would dread picking up the phone.

And of course now that he’s gone I regret every single time I didn’t want to pick up the phone.

The thing about his passing is that from where I am it looked like it was something that happened overnight. My dad was constantly telling me he was “fine, just tired.” and suddenly he wasn’t okay and a few days later he was gone. Just like that. To my mom and brother it wasn’t overnight, but they were there with him. I wasn’t able to go to his funeral cause I had no idea he was having one until the day of.

My dad knows flying is painful for me (doesn’t stop me from flying and wouldn’t had stopped me from going to his funeral had I known about it) and that Tums was too small to fly yet. He was always worried that Tums might have what I have but tbh I messed up my own tissues.

Long story short: I stuck a peanut up my nose too far (my mom is an RN and I wouldn’t eat a lot as a kid and she said if I didn’t start eating she was going to feed me through my nose like her patients. She failed to mention WITH A TUBE.) so my mom had to take me to the hospital where they had to remove it. And in the process I had somehow messed up some tissue in that area. I was suppose to have surgery to fix it as a kid but that never happened. It just feels like my left ear specifically is going to burst out of my head when the plane lands, no biggie. Sometimes I can manage to “keep pressure out of it” and it won’t hurt as bad when the plane lands… but you know what, this is meant for another blog post.

So that’s why I wasn’t told about his funeral; because he didn’t want me or Tums to have to deal with that. But in exchange, I still haven’t said my goodbye’s. I still haven’t come to terms with the fact he’s gone and sometimes I’ll even forget. And think it’s been awhile since I texted him a photo of Tums (he LOVED getting photos and videos of Tums every single day); and I’ll remember he’s gone and it’s like that day all over again.

I’m seriously surprised I haven’t burst into tears yet writing this.

His death anniversary is coming up and I honestly don’t know how I’m not gonna lose my shit that day. August suddenly has become really really hard.

Sorry there isn’t any photos or anything, I just really needed to write.

“Never mind that, just make sure you take care of yourself,”