Disconnected

The best dad a girl could ever hope to have died on November 10, 2010.   What to say about my dad?  There are so many things....he was a wonderful guy, a sweet dad and loved to tell jokes.   He was the kind of person everyone liked.  I look a lot like him - his funeral picture is one from when he joined the Navy during WWII and everyone keeps telling me how much he looked like me at 17.   Same dimples, same eyes.   He'd been sick a long time....he lived a long life, etc.   It's still a shock when I think about it.  My mom died only 5 months ago - 2010 has been a tough year for us.  Now that our parents our gone, it's official....we are no longer "kids".    Pretty soon, I will have to put my childhood home on the market.   Not sure how that is going to feel.  

My sister shocked the guy at the phone company when she had to cancel our family phone line....he caught his breath when he looked at the service date....I am not sure when they got that phone number but we've had it at least since 1969.   She remarked that it was back from the Michigan Bell days.  I am surprised at how sentimental I am about that phone number.  I can remember memorizing it when I was going off to kindergarten.  Back then, no one needed to know the area code....of course it was 313.   It changed as Detroit grew into the suburbs, but the base number stayed the same.   Back in the day,  anything that wasn't 313 was long distance,  and no one called long distance then because it was expensive.    How many times have I written that number down in my life?   Thousands, I am sure.  I can remember being thrilled when some young man finally asked me for that phone number.   These days, when a boy likes you, you don't talk on the phone - you text.    A young woman might go through quite a few phone numbers now - it doesn't feel the same.   In my day, the first 3 digits indicated where you lived.   It meant something   Now with Vonage or Skype or a cell phone, who knows where you are?   I used that phone number on my first job application.    I called that number from college most every Saturday morning early, a tradition I continued until my mother got too sick to get up in the morning to chat as we always did.  

So I called it one last time just to see what would happen.  Sure enough, the recorded voice let me know that the number I had reached is disconnected.   Just like me.  Disconnected.