Markers

It's the first second marker of the new year.  The first second "anniversary" of something I'd rather not remember.  [Second, not first.  I forgot about the 6th, although I remembered it at the time, ten days ago - the 8th anniversary of Wings's younger brother's death.  The fact that I could forget that in the space of ten days says something about my mindset today, none of it good.]

There are plenty more on the way, and their numbers increase every year.  Another hazard of age.

Dad would've been 90 today.  And, predictably, he's still manage to plant himself firmly in my head, like it or not.  Worse, he brought an earworm with him, so I'll spend the entire day being reminded of things I'd rather not remember, all to their own special soundtrack.

This was the last "pop" album I can remember him truly liking, or maybe even buying.  He always had a thing for the Patsy Cline school of country music - damsels in distress.  Of course, he also always had a thing for weepy old country songs about dead dogs and dead people, and he sang them off-key until I cried.  For someone as depressive as he was, I never understood the sick fascination with tragedy.  In retrospect, I don't know that it was the tragedy so much as an affinity with bathos and pathos.

Anyway, Wilma Burgess.  I think it must have been '67.  He'd come home every single night from work and put this on my sister's record player, and sit in the white rocking chair and sing along in a "melody" as flat as his Michigan accent.  

Track 5.  I had to go look it up.  "Touch My Heart."  Over and over and over.  How I hated that song.  

It's going to follow me around all day, so I might as well get used to it.