The other day I was calling my stepmom on my cell phone and an ironic realization hit me. When I enter her home phone number the name tied to that number shows on my phone contacts as "Dad." What's so ironic about that? It's the fact that I kept "Dad" as the contact name after he died....
The day after Austin died my phone rang, I looked at the caller ID. It showed "Austin" was calling. My mind became instantly confused. How could Austin be calling me? Was Austin really alive? Was the whole accident a mix up? Would Austin be on the other end if I answered?
No. Austin was no longer with us. He wasn't calling me. It was actually my middle son calling. I had let my middle son have Austin's phone, since he didn't have one of his own. But I never thought about how it would show up on my caller ID, and it freaked me out.
After a couple of days of receiving calls or texts from "Austin" I knew I had change that number listing, but I didn't have it in me to have a different person's name. I can't explain it, it just didn't feel right, as if if I was cutting Austin off. (Which is silly, I know, but it was what it was.) So I changed the listing to "The Boys." Problem solved. "The Boys" could include Austin, right? Since both my middle and youngest son were using the phone at the time, "The Boys" covered both of them, and kept Austin connected to that number.
Eventually, my middle son became the sole user of that phone (and phone number), and asked me to have just his name appear on my caller id. I obliged. It didn't make sense to keep it as "The Boys," when it was only my middle son using that number.
Fast forward three years from that incident. After my father passed away it didn't bother me that "Dad" still showed up on the caller ID. In fact, it gave me comfort. Now when I call my stepmom, and the caller id shows I'm dialing "Dad," it brings me comfort. So I keep it as-is. Which brings me back to what I was thinking about the other day when I called "Dad...."
Isn't it ironic two very similar two similar situations have me reacting in two very different ways? That they evoke two different feeling? I don't know it is. So I simply sum it up as, "It is what it is...it just is."
