Is There Life On Mars?

I don't know anything about Mars. I know it's the Red Planet, but that's it. It's up there, in the sky, but that's really all I know. But, this damned David Bowie song runs through my mind. Plus, every morning, I wake up, and in my line of sight is a large globe that's set up on top of one of my stereo speakers. But the globe isn't earth, like normal, it's Mars. When Tim's parents came to the house to clean out his room, they asked us if there was anything we wanted, and that was what I wanted. He used to get so irked when I cracked jokes about the globe, that's why I needed it.

It's been a little over two months since Tim passed, and he's still everywhere. I hope he never goes away. I hope that when I'm 40 years old, I'll be having a computer problem and wish he was there to help. I hope that next year, when I turn 30, I'll remember that Tim would've been 25 next year. His birthday will be celebrated. I hope that isn't too strange.

I've intentionally placed myself in a situation that will always keep him on my mind. I'm on my computer often (obviously). Now that he's gone, we don't want his bedroom to be used as a bedroom anymore, it wouldn't be right. So, now Aaron and I have our computers in Tim's room. It's not the computer room, or at least we don't always refer to it that way. It's Tim's room. The desk where my computer is set up is exactly where he had his computer desk. The half burned-out Christmas lights that he had strung up around the windows are still there. In fact, out of 25 lights, only four of them worked. That's the way they were when he first hung them there months ago. We asked why, and he just said he liked it that way. It's kind of funny, because he used to tease me so much for having a laptop computer that I never take anywhere, and now that same computer is exactly where he used to have his desktop computer.

I really don't need any of that to remember him. I'm confronted with something every day, in fact almost every hour that makes me think of him. Also, we're still getting mail for him. It started the day after he passed and that was over two months ago. Every day, we get at least one catalog of some sort for medical research supplies. Usually supplies that deal with immunology or DNA/RNA research or biochemistry or some other area of medical science that we don't know anything about, and he never mentioned. But it's all addressed to him. Some of them are addressed to "Dr. Van Esley," which we think is kinda funny. It's almost like he had to say he was a doctor so they would send him free catalogs. What really bothers us, though is that we can't figure out what he was up to. I know I've brought this up before, but the catalogs keep coming.

I don't know, I guess that's all for now. We'll come back to this, I guarantee it.