Always Something There to Remind Me

when something is no longer part of your life - when someone dies, yes, but also when a friendship goes sour, you break up with a partner, a pet dies or runs away, you lose a job you liked, or maybe you move away from a city you lived in for years - the memories of it are everywhere.  often they pop up in unexpected places  or catch you when you least expect it.  (like in the song "call me maybe" - why is chirpy bubblegum music making me cry?)  but it happens, and it's normal, and we assume it will happen when we lose something we love. i anticipated this, but i was not even a little prepared for how extensive it was. and still is, six months later.
eric and talked about everything. important stuff, sure; the world and how it works and how we felt about it and all sorts of deep, philosophical thoughts. but also - and more often - lots and lots of mundane and often silly things. music, tv shows, really bad jokes, where we were taking each other to visit when we (someday) had money, horrible puns, the pros/cons of moving to idaho, what animals we identified with, harry potter, doctor who, being geeks in general, emoticons, and whole host of other ridiculous things. i loved all our deep conversations, but i absolutely adored our dorkiness. and because said dorkiness ranged across so many subjects, the reminders are everywhere.
the other problem (maybe problem is not the right word - complication? issue?) is my eidetic memory.  granted, it's much more selective than it was when i was a kid due to the years of undiagnosed celiac and the resulting brain fog, but now that i'm mostly healthy, it has started to return. and moments from the last few years are burned indelibly into my memory circuits.  although, now that i think of it, maybe it's not just that. maybe it was just him. because even before that, before the onset of the worst of my symptoms, before my brain started clearing up and remembering more of what it saw, i seem to have filed away all sorts of little interactions. unimportant things, casual conversations, nothing impressive. and all stuff before we really started spending time together and became close. but he was always on my radar, i guess. and my brain - however many holes and gaps it has when it comes to other subjects - found a way to tuck him inside to keep.
anyway, the point of all that is this: saying that everything reminds me of eric - of some conversation we had or some joke we shared or some time we hung out - is not hyperbole. it is actual fact. and while sometimes i'm too busy or preoccupied to always notice the connection or to let myself dwell on it, it happens. a hundred times a day. and at least a dozen of those random times cause me to, if not out and out cry, at least tear up. and there's nothing i can do about it, because the emotion is just there, and so strong that it just bubbles out before i can stop it. (which is super professional when you're working with a student and something stupid like the word "doctrine" or a reference to a platypus suddenly brings tears to your eyes.) not to mention the countless things that cross my path that make me immediately think, "i need to send this... never mind." i mean, who else is going to appreciate a star trek/beatles crossover meme on all the levels? or fantastically illustrated puns? the conversations that would've followed those shares would've had me laughing all night. and i miss that so desperately. there seem to be a million things i miss, deep, important, life-changing things, and maybe i'll be able to discuss those things eventually. (those roots go deep, though, and - since i spent much of the writing of this blog with tears trickling down my face - i'm not sure i'm ready to sob openly while trying to write that one.) but it's the smallest things that make my heart ache the most. the hello-theres and what're-you-doings and what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-peoples and so-this-just-happeneds. they were the best parts of my days and now they're gone. and nearly everything in the world seems to remind me of that. i hate the reminders because the initial happy thought is invariably followed by a vague but crushing sense of "and i never get to do/see/talk about that with him again." but oddly i love them, too, because they mean those things happened, and i got to be a part of them, and i wouldn't trade that for anything in the world.