Another Reason E-mail Sucks — As yet unsettled

Day 11.

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Today was largely indistinguishable from the last two days, except that I made the mistake of thinking. I’ve been meaning to look back at old e-mails to see if there’s anything I want to make sure I keep and back-up. I looked back through my earliest e-mails sent from my current address, written about 15 years ago, and had forgotten that, partly out of necessity but mostly out of a desire for this to be true, my first e-mail was sent to my dad.

I looked through some unimportant messages where we forwarded each other links and the like before finding one that reminded me of him. Enough time has passed, and his health degraded enough over time, that I couldn’t remember how crisp, clean, and confident his writing could be – was. It was startling but good to read his voice again and re-experience a bit of how he wrote. The message itself wasn’t important, just him passing on a funny anecdote, but it was perfectly him. And that broke me.

For the first time since the devastating tears of a couple days back, the breakdown that hurt so badly I still feel beaten from it, I cried real tears. My eyes well up, as I wrote, at the slightest push, but this was more than that; it was uncontrollable. (And I fear there may be more before I sleep.)

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In his prior message he mistyped (or autocorrect did) “élan” as “Alan”. After noticing the error too late, he sent this as a second message:

It's élan. Alan was a guy I worked with at Mutual of Omaha. He would write too much in his letters just as he'd say too much when he tried to make a point. The antithesis of Okam's [sic] Razor. Once, we received an envelope of letters back from the steno pool to sign and send. Alan had a beautiful letter -- small paragraph, bigger paragraph, small closing paragraph. The letter had a PS; it was on the second page. The second page was 75% covered by one huge paragraph. I can't recall Alan's last name today, but I will later.

[….]

Thanks for the picture. I enjoy looking at it, and am glad you became taller than I haven't.

HEATH! Alan Heath!

Pop-up and out.

I miss him an unreasonable amount. And I don’t have anything else to say.

It’s been 11 days.

終