A couple of weeks ago I got the Timehop app which shows me my social media activity of that day in my past seven years on facebook every day. I rarely need it because I have awesome date memory. I usually remember what I did on a particular day in my history, or at least the week. There are certain dates you just remember what you did, like September 11, 2001, or December 4, 2013, the day of my graduation. However, one date I remember what I did every year for the past eight years. June 14 has not been a pleasant day in the past eight years. I've done different things but I dread the day, and I always remember what I did these days. June 14 is the most significant date in my entire year, because June 14, 2006 was the worst day of my life.
In the morning I saw my dad drive off to work. I still had a jetlag because I had just arrived back from the US the day before. It is genuinely ridiculous to me how I still remember him walking to the car, what the clouds looked like, how warm it was and what he was wearing eight years later, as if it happened last week. That was the last time I saw him. I barely ever think about this. I'd say I think about the fact I no longer have a father less than once a month because it is reality and nothing to ponder about. On June 14 of every year it comes back up though because suddenly it's been another year without him and another year I'm getting closer to having spent the largest amount of my life being a semi-orphan.
Following June 14, 2006 I cried for a long time and then I stopped doing it for an even longer time. I've not cried for my Dad outside of the date that is June 14 in five years because it's no longer a sad story, it's just what happened. It's my story, and a big chapter of it! For months, maybe years, it was impossible to really fathom but enough time's passed to realize that it's just another event that sucked and that no action can make a difference at all, even crying. Other factors make it weirder this year, namely me working for the same organization my dad worked for the morning of his death which would make him freakishly happy if he knew it and the World Cup being on. 2006 Germany playing the tournament they did in our own country was the only good thing that summer. Maybe that's why football is pretty much the best thing in my life even today...
I'm not at odds with the past. June 14, 2006 changed my life like no other day of my life, past and hopefully future. Nothing that ever happened was worse for me. The consequences, on the other hand, didn't ruin my life even a little bit. If June 14, 2006 hadn't happened I wouldn't even be close to the same person that I am now and I love where life went. Right now my dad being alive would be especially awesome because he would help me with my current situation on a personal and professional level. Hovever, I don't think I would even have come to this point. Maybe I'd be a lot happier, still living in the US, having a dad, being married with kids and all... most likely, however, I would not have made the experiences I made that have lead me to become a person that gets life quite well and that just cannot be seen as a bad thing.
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