I think I’m done with July.

I mean, I bought a my first house in July, my mom’s birthday is in July, my wedding anniversary is in July, the 4th of July is in July, but I think I’m just done with it, on the whole.

Two weeks ago my wife and I had finished celebrating 3 years of marriage and were getting ready for bed when my cell phone rang. I ignored it because it was my dad’s phone, it was 11:30 at night, and I figured he was calling to wish us happy anniversary and lost track of the time difference. At 12:04 it rang again and I figured I should answer. The strange voice asking me my name and whether my dad was my dad told me just about everything I needed to know.

Some day I’ll hear the words I spoke at his funeral. I can’t remember any of them, but I’m told there was a recording made. I do know that I stood in a church and heard a lot of other people talk about how it was God’s plan and how my dad was in a better place. I feel like I should say “I wish I could believe it”, but I don’t think I do wish that.

Heart attacks killed my father’s father just short of his 53rd birthday and my father at 59 1/2. My dad did live long enough to see both son’s married and meet 3 infant grandsons, unlike his father, two of who’s sons were teenagers when he died. Still, he’ll never come visit me again. He’ll never drive his Miata down sun-drenched California highways again. He’ll never IM me with banal questions about the weather in Georgia while I’m trying to power through a project again.

I was raised to believe in a loving power who took my father home to eternal rest and peace, but I live in a rational world governed by laws of causality and physics and let me tell you these last 2 weeks feel more like the cold randomness of a unfeeling universe than some supreme being’s greater good.

But if God exists, then He’s a prick for taking my dad when his grandsons are too young to remember him.

I think I’m done with Him and His plan.

And I think I’m done with July…