I only found it by accident. I borrowed my dad’s laptop to print a form, and there on the desktop was a spreadsheet simply named “People.” I clicked it expecting a budget. It was something else entirely.
It was a list of everyone in his life. Every child, grandchild, in-law, neighbor, and old friend. Next to each name: their birthday. Their favorite snack. Their favorite drink. And a column, gently worded, of “things they don’t like” — foods, topics, the flowers that made my aunt sneeze.
There were notes I didn’t expect. “Doesn’t like surprises — tell her first.” “Allergic to walnuts, check every label.” “Going through a hard year, call more.” My own row noted the exact candy bar I loved as a kid, the one he still somehow always has in the cupboard when I visit.
The file’s history said it had been updated three days earlier. This was not some old project he started once and abandoned — he was maintaining it, quietly, the way he maintains everything: the cars, the gutters, the little repairs you only notice by their absence. Nearly two hundred rows. Some of the names were people I know he has not seen in years.
There was even a row for my mother, who has been gone eleven years now. Her favorite flowers. The candy she liked at Christmas. The note beside her name simply said: “Keep buying the lilacs in May.” He still does. I had seen them on the kitchen table every spring and never once asked.
I sat there and cried at a spreadsheet. Because suddenly a hundred small moments made sense. The way there was always my favorite soda in the fridge. The way he never once got an order wrong at a family dinner. The way he seemed to remember everything — it wasn’t magic, and it wasn’t even memory. It was love, quietly turned into a system so he’d never let any of us down.
THE STORY CONTINUES ON THE NEXT PAGE… 👇👇👇
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