I recently had to renew my Drivers License and as we all know that time spent at the DMV is the worst experience imaginable, all that aside my time there offered up a very humbling moment. Something that is still sitting with me not only having to fill out a certain section of the document but having it verbally confirmed by the clerk. I was in and out of there in a matter of around twenty minutes but i’ll hold true to most of it was the most emotionally stabbed in a while.
For those that are unaware of my life story, three years ago I became a widowed father of toddler girls but my story goes deeper than that… I’ll keep it short. It all began back in 2009 when my mother passed away. I was left in the hands of my step father whom never really valued me, I was young I was broken I was mourning. Over the course of a few years everyone I called blood family left me, abandoned me, disowned me. I didn’t fit their religious narritave, Im tattoed, I curse, and I drink so I understand how it’s easier to just walk away. Long story short, when my partner passed away in 2022 I was left with no support and no family to call my own so what does one do when they feel lost and alone? They hide in themselves and ghost the world.
Fast forward to the DMV, one of the questions on previously mentioned form is Emergency Contact. I’m sure to most it’s benign question but to me it’s a point of terrible realization.
I left it blank.
Moments later I’m sitting in front of the clerk going over the document and she audibly asks “Emergency Contact?” to which i’m forced to respond, “No, There’s no one”.
In that i’m forced to relive years of trauma. The fact I could die tomorrow and no one would know, how many would care? Those that do how long till they find out or do I just fade into obscurity. I firmly believe we experience three deaths in our life/afterlife, once when our body ceases to function. Again when our body is buried or disposed and finally when our memory is completely forgotten… The thought that those three deaths could happen for me in such quick succession is depressing. I’ve lost partners, family, and friends not just to physical death but mental and emotional as well.
My kids have their grandparents to carry on the memory of their mother and I’m grateful for that as she was such a caring loving woman. Me, when I die, I guess I am left to fade… Something I’m trying to cope with but maybe it’s an emotion that will haunt me forever. This is the life I’m meant to live.