A cell phone number

The other day, I was sitting in the train without a book or mp3 player to entertain me. I whipped out my cell phone and began scrolling through my address book, deleting people I no longer kept in touch with or pizza delivery places I no longer ordered from. Deleting someone from your cell phone is an interesting phenomenon. For some people, I suppose it's very perfunctory. "Never gonna talk to that person again, delete." For me, because I tend to overthink things, I wonder, "Really, am I never ever going to talk to this person ever again, ever?" (Yes, a tad dramatic. But that is what some of us do to distract ourselves from the daily monotony that is our lives.) So you never know, you just might need that taxi cab number in your cell for the next time you're in Tampa, Florida.

Of course, as I scrolled through my numbers, I inevitably encountered the entry, "Dad."

My dad got rid of his cell phone while he was alive and so I never got around to deleting it. Then after he passed away, deleting it just seemed so harsh, not to mention the last thing on my mind.

OKAY, I understand it's just an allocated number of bytes inside my cell phone, that's all it is, nothing more, nothing less. It's not like I'm deleting him from my life or my memories. Just his number.

But I suppose deleting his number signified the beginning of something. Something that I don't want to begin. Something uncomfortable and sad. So I tried to be perfunctory about it. Like, "Bob the Pizza guy, delete." So now it's "Dad, delete." And when my phone asked me, "Confirm Erase?" with a choice between yes and no, I couldn't help but notice the "No" option had been pre-selected, as if my cell phone were asking me, "Come on, you're not seriously thinking about deleting this entry, are you? Because if you do, it will be deleted forever. So confirm it, but I'm guessing it's 'no,' that's why I have it already selected for you."

I bit my lip, selected "Yes," and hit "Okay." And it was deleted. My cell phone was sure to display an image of an eraser moving across a floppy disk to illustrate to me that indeed, I was erasing something from the memory of my phone.

And then I began to cry. Stupid, I know. It's just a number. An allocated number of bytes inside my cell phone, that's all it is, nothing more, nothing less. It's not like I'm deleting him from my life or my memories. Just his number.