July is a weird month for me. First off, it holds the day I was born and while that was absolutely a monumental moment in my life, for the last two years, the weeks surrounding my birthday have held monumental events that brought home how tender life can be in its presence and its absence.

My dad would make me a birthday card every year for as long as he’d been collaging, which happened somewhere in his 80th year. A card exploding with colorful overlays would arrive in the mail or be handed to me in person signed “love papasan” in neat tight print. I don’t know when the papasan moniker began but it became his password for many things, the computer I gave him that he only used for his everyday emails to me—although there was one purchase from Amazon, which he thought was unnecessary rather than convenient. “Why don’t I just go to the store to buy a frying pan?”—his Lifeline device that was also a bit of a struggle to get him to wear—”Why do I need to carry this thing around again?” In all honesty, he was an agreeable guy who merely wanted to go out to buy his own things and be independently functional. Papasan in the world.

(slideshow above of a D.Spencer selection of birthday cards along with the early process/stages of a Dennis message at the end.)

Which is why the last two Julys were particularly challenging. The first of those two being the initial time he came face-to-face with his frailty in a way that put him in the hospital, which was somewhere that, except for his birth, he’d never spent time. The second July delivered him back to that place. Where I came into this existence in that same hottest of months in a hospital room surrounded by nervous people who loved me and nurses/doctors who brought me in, he was released from this place also surrounded by nervous people who loved him along with a medical staff who knew how to show him the exit.

July. This past year I’ve been marking days the way you do when you lose someone (or something, perhaps). Thinking Last year at this time, we were … [fill in the blank with event from Christmas to Fourth of July to moving him into the assisted living place to other random and also happy moments]. In 12 days that cycle will finish. That’s not to say I won’t still have daily flashes of a moment that reminds me of him, because of course. Yet in this new surrounding where I’m currently watching out the window as one of the Chuckies has a breakfast of grass and tiny flowers on our side lawn, where a river runs through just a few miles away and some swimming in cool water is possible, where every day I marvel at really how beautiful and also challenging this place can be, I’m amazed at how the memory of him feels much sharper. I think the space—of geography, of time—has made that true. And I’m fine with that. More than fine really.

As you may remember, I mentioned in some posts a few months ago about going to Belgium to see Måneskin at a festival. I didn’t do that. Although I’m not unhappy with the decision at all, I do recognize that I was looking to do something with this month of July that was big, bombastic, different from any other. Some escape, some distraction. Neither of those things are bad yet also I’m pretty sure it’s quite excellent for me to be here surrounded by people I love, including my dad, whose presence is everywhere in this new place from artwork to books to lamps, and be shown into one more year in this hottest of months: July.