Pee Break

My parents have owned and operated a lodging home business since I was very young. If you don't know what that is it doesn't matter enough to explain but - I've known the clients who have come/gone and some that still live there for what seems like forever. Last week my Dad calls me and lets me know that one of the clients had passed away (in a hospital, not on the spot or anything) but these people have very few relatives or friends so this person actually ended up leaving 90% of his belongings to my mother, who also made all his final arrangements. If you know these guys who live there it is actually not weird at all that this would be the case, nor is the fact that he didn't have anyone to claim his remains so they are in a box in the house on display which is, I guess, a nice memorial for the people he knew.

And depressing as shit.

After this happened another one of the clients said she was also going to leave her belongings to my parents, aside from a few things to her family members, and sat down and wrote out her Will on a piece of lined paper that he said only filled up half the page. It's all very sweet isn't it though?

And depressing as shit.

My Dad then lamented with me that he hopes his life will be a little more full and shared his fears that very few people will miss him. He said he wanted hundreds of people to inform if he ever died. I reminded him that 1) he always has me to miss him, I'm as good as 100 people missing anyone.. I'm that good at it. 2) my birthday is coming and he just fast-tracked a freakout quite nicely. I'll confuse you here by saying that I love my birthday, birthdays, celebrating them etc. It's not actually about the birthday. I am not afraid no one will miss me, or of dying, nor that I haven't accomplished anything significant if that happened. Seriously, I'm not just saying that. I actually feel quite the opposite, so, I guess that's a lucky thing. The actual problem I have is a little phobia best described by John Mayer's Stop this Train, if I can get a little Mary Catherine Gallagher on you; which is there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop time even if you don't need to. In my mind it's as if I'm on a tread mill going very slow and you think, what is so bad about that? hardly any work at all.. but it's the fact that you can never get off. Ever. Not even to pee. You can't even reason with anyone to get a pee break, or go faster so you can stop for one at some point ahead.. there are no pee breaks in life, period.

Another horrible story for you which is 100% true and 110% depressing as shit, and zero to do with my birthday. When I was very young I was having a sleepover at my grandparents house and I remember when it was time for bed my grandma told me to go upstairs and get ready and she'd be right up. I (a little like Ethan, actually) enthusiastically insisted she come up right now with me!.. come on let's race upstairs! She started going up the stairs and I was behind her and I asked why she was going so slow and she said it was because she was too old. When we got upstairs I asked her if she was going to die and she said yes, she would die some day but I shouldn't worry about it because it wouldn't be for a while. To me that said, you might as well worry about it now because I have no concept of time so "a while" could be next week as far as I know. After she read the story and I went to bed, I got up and ran downstairs bawling my eyes out asking her why she was going to die and leave me all alone. Her response was to make me feel better by telling me it's ok because everything dies.. including me. Muuuuch better.

I only wish I freaked out about aging one day a year because honestly, it's every fucking day, my birthday is just the best one.