06/21/2026
To my Dad in heaven this Father’s Day.
Grief is strange. So strange.
One moment, you are laughing with good friends over a meal you prepared, having what feels like the best day of your life- feeling like nothing else matters and you’re ready to take the world.
And the next moment, your tears are falling in the middle of a supermarket aisle or just simply driving, because you just know that life right now is tougher, and I could use a good phone call to you and tell all my pain.
As I write this, it has been 1,492 days since my Dad has left us. That fateful day of missing you by 2 days and left this world without your little girl there. That vacation turned funeral… that trip that changed everything.
So that means, some days do go down smoother than others.
And many nights are now spent sleeping than crying.
However, as I post this, he just had his 4th anniversary in heaven and 4th Father’s Day.
And that painful ache in my chest reminds me that grief does not measure its value the same way we measure time.
And if grief were an equation, all the “I’m sorry for your loss” and sympathy around, sadly amount to nothing.
Because this whole grief’s percentage, remains 100, remains full, at maximum- while the chance of ever seeing them again, remains to nothing, to ZERO.
My dad’s presence, remains woven into the fabric of my everyday life. My thoughts, my ways, my values, my decisions, the way I see the world and the way I see myself. The cakes I make, my color choices? I got it all from him.
Yet, why is it when I look around, he is nowhere to be found?
And so I cry, as children do.
Because no matter how old I am, losing my Dad has a way of reminding me that I am still his child, Daddy’s girl.
The world moves on and looks the same just as it did before.
But the family I used to turn to, has now changed. The life I used to live, has completely changed.
Perhaps that is the strange thing about love. To which right now, I am trying to really understand what it really is.
Love does not end when life does, it only changes its form. Goes with my grief from losing him and my brother or to losing someone so valuable in your life.
From someone I could hold in my arms, I can now only hold him forever in my heart.
And that is where my father will remain with me everywhere… even when in reality, he is nowhere to be found.
Grief. Healing. It’s not beautiful.
It’s confronting the version of you that you’ve avoided for years. It’s not soft or linear, it’s ugly and chaotic- and it’s painfully honest.
It’s all of it. Layered and tangled and overwhelming.
And sometimes, the hardest part isn’t the pain itself. It’s knowing that no one else can see it.
It’s days like today where it hits harder.
I love you, Daddy. I miss you, always.
Happy Father’s Day in heaven. You are my favorite.
Cat