I woke up this morning, on my 46th birthday, with lower back pain and the inability to read my phone in bed without glasses. Life comes at you fast.

I also removed Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok from my phone. I’ve replaced them with Babbel, ConjuGato, and WordReference Spanish-English dictionary. It’s been a while since I’ve spent time learning something new and that seems like a better use of my time than browsing videos about dogs. Don’t worry, I kept Reddit on my phone, so I still have access to premium dog content.

The last six months have been challenging. My mom died in December and this is the first birthday of my life I haven’t heard from her. I’ve been dreaming about her a lot the last couple weeks and it’s bittersweet to wake up from those nights. A lot of the dreams involve my trying to help her manage things (get on a plane, get to an appointment, physically get into a building) and they are maddeningly unproductive. But I can hear her voice and feel her hand in mine and then I wake up and she’s gone again.

I read somewhere recently that when someone dies, you should think about them as if they are away on vacation. You can’t call them because cell service is crap on the islands and they didn’t pay for an international data plan, but you hope they’re having a good time. So I think about Mom on a beach somewhere warm with her toes in the sand, humming. And I hum to myself as well.