I’m having a day. You know the kind where you wake up pissed off at everything and nothing? That’s how I feel. Maybe pissed off isn’t the right word. I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily mad at anything, I guess I’m just emotional today. I keep crying. For no reason whatsoever. And for all the reasons.

I was in the McDonald’s drive thru last night (yes, gross, but apparently during the ‘rona, McDonald’s is the only fast food restaurant that stays open past 9 pm and we were at baseball until well past 9 pm so you gotta do what you gotta do when you have 3 hungry and growing boys in your back seat – in our defense, we tried to go to Chic Fil A but those assholes weren’t open even though it clearly said on the line that they were open until 10 pm) and I was behind this big, black jacked up truck (for real, not just stealing Luke Bryan lyrics) and the whole thing was covered in stickers. There was not a stitch of paint you could see on the tailgate for all the damn stickers on this truck. I mean, any place this person had ever been was represented on that damn tailgate. And back glass. Even the boys in the backseat commented on the ridiculous amount of stickers covering this truck (which is saying something because 5, 9 and 10 year old boys are not the most observant creatures in the world). There were naked ladies, there was foul language, there was energy drink representation, there was all sorts of racing stickers, the world was the back of that trucks oyster when it came to stickers.

I’m certain you’re wondering where the hell I’m going with this and why the hell you would possibly care about this ridiculous truck with it’s ridiculous stickers, but I probably have a point and I may even get to it.

Laughter is my favorite thing in the whole wide world. And I don’t have one of those dainty, cute laughs that would be considered endearing and charming. No, it’s a full blown, louder than a fog horn, cackling, annoying sound that drove Ash a little insane. However, while it may have driven him insane, he could make me laugh like no other. And I must say, that laughter is possibly the glue that held us together most times.

Anywho, Ash and I were big on making fun of everything, including ourselves. We were equal opportunity maker funner ofers. (Yes, I know those are not real words.) We didn’t do it to be mean, we just find humans (ourselves and others) to be really, really funny and really, really mock-worthy.

Ash hated bumper stickers. They drove him nuts. He could never understand why in the world anyone would want total strangers on the road to know anything about their own personal lives – from your basic stick family, to your honor student, to your student who beat up another honor student, to Calvin pissing on everything (do those even still exist, might be showing my age here), to your vacation in Keystone to all your favorite breweries. You get the point. He loathed bumper stickers.

And last night, I saw a plethora of bumpers stickers at a random McDonald’s in Virginia Beach and it made me miss him. I could just imagine all the things he would have to say, all the jokes he would crack, all the mocking that would ensue. And I just started laughing. Out loud. In my car. With 3 boys in the backseat that smelled of sweat and feet. For no good reason. And I think I’ve just had him on my mind ever since.

And the crazy thing is, the more time passes, the less I have him on my mind. And that hurts. I suppose it’s only natural. We have to move on. We have to continue with the business of living. But I don’t think of him all day, every day anymore. I’m forgetting things about him, about us, about our lives. I’m moving forward. The boys are moving forward. We’re just used to not having him around and while that’s probably normal, it also hurts a good bit. You know, when I actually stop for a minute and think about it, or when I see something that would make us laugh out loud and mock incessantly.

Today I hurt. Today I miss him. Today I want to laugh with him. Today I want to laugh at him. Today I want him to laugh at me. But instead, I cry. Alone. Because there will be days like this.