Day 37 of Grief: Where Do I Go When There’s a Joke?

(recorded on phone- imaginary chats with darren)

Aren’t we something? Oh my God, you’re a great designer. You’re the best.

And how lucky of me, I could always defer to you about design things. Nerdy things. We’d chat about web design and UX, or issues with sites you were working on – or I would check with you about sites I was working on. You are so knowledgeable about UX, I could never hold the levels of knowledge you have, and I created a fucking website for you – and what do I do with it now? Close it?

“But why don’t you?”

“Well, I can’t.”

That’s so weird as well. I let my head imagine you in there, talking away.

We can’t talk about Jeffrey Donaldson- you’ll be giving off for another fucking hour and a half if you had heard the news..Oh, fuck I can just imagine it.

Did you see the end of Rivals?

Oh, it was good. It was enjoyable. You would have enjoyed it.

I want to watch it again because I love that type of thing, as you know. We both love that type of thing. It’s dead fucking hilarious.

It’s going to be tough for me to go and watch Hacks you know, because Hacks is the show we fucking love. Jean Smart. I don’t even know the name of the other actress. I don’t know anyone’s name outside of Kaitlin Olson, which is terrible because there are so many of them that are super funny. I always said to you that they were the superstars of TV.

I’ve been meaning to go back and watch it, but I’m just like: where do I go when there’s a joke That’s quite a hard situation that I have to figure out. Who do I laugh with? Do I laugh?

I think I was sort of settled to the fact that you were gone. Not really freaked out. I just have scenarios where I think I’m probably not doing well here because I really fucking enjoy chatting to you like this.

Im worried though, I think it’s probably holding me back from realising you’re gone.

So how does that work?

Ive had a really enjoyable night. Me chatting to myself.

I’ve always chatted to myself. When I was a kid, I loved chatting to myself. Chatting to myself was one of my favourite things.

I can be painting and chatting to myself, or fucking cleaning. Cleaning is a great job for chatting to yourself. So it’s not like I don’t have an enjoyable side to fucking chatting to myself.

But I’m really enjoying this new version of chatting to myself. I’m verbalising all the stuff I would have said to you anyway, if we were getting drunk and slabbering. I suppose I pretend you are here and just chat about things.

I’ve let the recorder run and pretend you’re chatting with me

What do we talk about?

We’re going to talk about Daniel. We’re going to talk about his school, and that he’s okay and that things are okay at school.

We may talk about music, songs or TV shows.

We were really big into talking about TV shows. Game of Thrones episodes—we would rewatch them. The same with The Walking Dead. We would discuss it, and would rewatch the episodes.

If you were here and we had just watched Rivals, we would so be chatting about it.

My head has so many thoughts throughout the day, and they’re all focused on you. It’s mad. I’ve never thought about you so much. I literally think about you all the time.

I wake up and realise you’re here, but you are not here. You are here in this house. Everything in this house is a constant reminder.

I could have conversations with other people. That would be nice. I could have conversations carrying on, but I don’t really want that. It’s kind of like pretending that you’re here while I’m talking. I have loads to say.

I can’t get over the fact that someone who was my best buddy and partner has gone. That’s the maddest thing about it all. You are someone who was my best pal, who completely got me, who would be the teller of the stories and the listener to my stories. All of that is gone. I don’t know where to go with it.

Really, it was just the two of us against the world.

This is something so deep. It’s an ingrained thing that we always did. We always had great conversations. You are literally was the best conversationalist.

You went out with all the people you knew from Oracle, and they loved you. They loved your conversation. And they were gushing over you when I met them.

I had that all the time. I was greedy. I have been so fucking greedy in having a man who was completely on my wavelength or I was completely on his.

At this point, you would interject into the slabbers. He would be talking about what John Oliver said or what Seth Meyers said about Trump or America “And do you know what he did this week?”

You would tell me every fact from every week. I really wish I had recorded some of them now, just so I could play them while I’m ranting and going on about things.

Nobody else knows them. Daniel has seen bits of them, but I always had you hilariously ranting and raving, like me ranting and raving. There has been so much, and none of it was recorded.