First time in six months without her. But it needed to be done. We need sleep and also to do some chores.
Been a good day so far. Got a lot done, reaching that tail end of the day though and I just needed to ramble.
Had a playlist going as we made horchata, M. Ward came on "Good Man Now He's Gone"

Got me thinking about my grandfather. Phil was my grandfather for all intents and purposes. By the time I came around Earl already had his own family and had left Granny. So I saw grandad sporadically and he wasn't my mom's biological anyways.
Phil wasn't my dad's biological either, hell, Phil was as old as my dad's oldest brother, but he loved my mama and showed her the world. You travel a lot in the military and while people like to point to me as the first from the family to travel internationally, Phil is the one that took my grandmother to Belgium when he was deployed.
Phil left my grandmother sometime in the late 90s, early 2000s, he wanted kids of his own and that was something she couldn't give him.

And my dad he was hurt, a lot. Phil had been around since he was like 15-16. My dad had seen some things his whole life and Phil was never gonna be a father figure, but he was much more of an older brother than my uncle ever was. First and only time I saw my dad cry was Phil's funeral. We lost track of Phil after the divorce. But when my grandma died we needed paperwork, dad got in touch with Phil and found out he was dying himself of cancer.
November 2008 Doug dies (biological)
Demceber 2008 Ola dies
January 2009 Phil dies
I had a rough time.
But yeah crying. Dad is telling a story of how he regrets not keeping in touch with Phil, you do funny things protecting the family. He tells a story of when he was a teenager and Phil performs CPR on a man as they were walking somewhere, once the EMS came, Phil walks back to my dad and continues whatever they were talking about. That's the kind of dude he was.

Reminded me of at my wedding when Fisher recounts a story of me stopping my car, helping a spazzed out man from being in the street, and then getting back in the car and finishing the story of whatever we were talking about. I don't remember it, but that's something I'd do because that's something you do. That's what you do.

I didn't come from a lot, never had a lot. All that I've ever known is responsibility. To provide more for the next lot, for those that come from me and after me. And seven years ago I was sitting in a hospital bugged out of my damn mind. Thinking I was unlocking the secrets to the universe but in reality at the start of a manic episode that once I came out of it, I didn't know how I'd ever get right again. By the time it was all said and done I had put on 60 lbs in two months, lost a job and most friends, developed a facial twitch, and was unemployed.

But I've worked hard to get right, to be on a better path, to go forward from there. Because it's ok to fail, and it's ok to try to fix what's wrong. And it's days like today where you can step out of it, to see where you've come from, and what it took to get there, and somedays it's ok to just recognize your influences. For the people that shaped you and those that shaped them.

I'm so grateful for the guidance that those two men provided me, and the strength and sense of responsibility they endued upon me. And while I can't talk to Phil anymore, I can reach out to my father and let him know how much he's influenced me. That at 34, being a parent is hard, and that he did it at 19, with very little guidance, and that I'm so proud of him. I'm so so proud of that man and how he's helped me be a man.

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“There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.” -Albert Camus