After He Was Gone: Part 2

Distance Returned Without Warning

After campus, I moved to a different city for work, and just like that, the distance returned. Not just the physical miles between us, but the emotional space that had once felt like a canyon. Life moved quickly with new responsibilities and new routines, and the noise of becoming an adult filled my days. The calls became fewer. The visits became fewer than the calls.

I told myself it was life. That we were busy. That there was nothing urgent to say. But sometimes I do wonder if it was something else. Maybe I thought I had done enough. Maybe I believed that the small effort I had made had repaired what could be repaired. Or maybe part of me was still afraid of letting him in.

Meanwhile, his health began to falter. Quietly at first, then in ways that became harder to ignore.

His body began to break in places we could not see, and the illnesses that came for him were slow and cruel. But we were not there. Not the way he may have needed. Not in the way we would later wish we had been.

There is a certain kind of silence that comes from knowing someone you once held at a distance needed you, and you were not there. It does not scream. It lingers. It stays with you.

Soon after, I got married, and life became heavier with responsibilities. There was a home to tend to, new routines to build, and a partnership that demanded my attention. I told myself it was understandable. That life had changed, and so had my priorities.

But if I am being honest, there were days when I heard a quiet voice in the back of my mind. A cold voice. A wicked one. It whispered that maybe this was payback. That he had not been there when we needed him most, and now I did not need to be there either.

That thought stayed longer than I care to admit. It made me slow to call. Slow to check in. Slow to plan a visit. The urgency faded, and I let it. I let the days pass, then weeks, then months. The need to go dimmed, not because I stopped caring, but because I did not know how to carry the weight of it all. Because the past still lived inside me, and I had never really figured out what to do with it.

And so, I lagged. Quietly. Intentionally. Regret had not yet arrived, but it was on its way.

The News We Thought Would Never Come

Then came the time we thought would pass like all the others. We had seen him sick before. He would go to the hospital, stay a few days, and return home. That was the routine. He had always come back. He always managed to come back.

But this time he stayed longer. Days turned to weeks. The relatives who visited him started to call my brothers more often. Their voices held something heavy. They said even the doctors looked unsettled. His sugar levels were unpredictable. Dangerous. If it had been someone else, they said, they would not have survived this long.

Still, I did not go. My heart was screaming for me to move, to act, to make time. But I had just become a mother. My body was still learning how to be strong again. My mind was full of feeding schedules and sleepless nights and the fragile little life I had just brought into the world.

I told myself I would go once the baby was a bit older, once I had a better plan. Once it made more sense. But grief does not wait for the perfect moment. After a few more weeks, the news came in. Dad was no more. Just like that. No final goodbye.

No visit. No chance to sit beside him and see the truth in his eyes. I had waited too long. No chance for me to tell him that I wanted to forgive him fully.

The Moment It Finally Hit

At first, the news did not fully hit me. It felt distant, like a shadow on the edge of my mind. The world kept turning, the days kept moving forward, but inside me, there was a quiet numbness, a disbelief I could not shake.

Then came the day of the burial. I stood there, surrounded by family, and the weight of finality pressing down. When it was time to release the soil onto his grave, my hands refused to obey. I tried to let the earth fall, but my fingers clenched tight, holding on to something I did not want to let go.

It was as if the ground beneath me was holding my grief hostage. Like the space between us was too full of words left unsaid, and forgiveness never fully given.

I struggled, wanting to say goodbye, but feeling like there was unfinished business between us.

Why had he had to leave before I could forgive him fully? Why was I still holding on to pain that now felt heavier than ever?

Eventually, someone gently helped me open my hands, and the soil slipped through. But in that moment, the loss felt as deep and as raw as the day I first heard he was gone.

The Evening of Quiet Truth

When I finally sat down that evening alone with my swirling thoughts, something settled deep inside me. It was a realization I had not been ready to face before. I was not truly grieving my father. No, what I was feeling was something more complicated and heavier.

I was sad because he left me with a wound I had carried for years. He left me a version of myself I barely recognized; a person hardened by bitterness and wrapped tightly in unforgiveness.

If I was going to mourn the man who had once been my hero, the man I had once looked up to with hope and love, I knew I had to do something far harder than simply cry or remember. I had to heal. I had to forgive.

There was something deeply sad about that truth. Sad that forgiveness came so late. Sad that the chance to reconcile had slipped away, buried beneath the earth where he now lay six feet under.

But even in that sadness, I sensed a flicker of something else, a fragile hope that maybe healing was still possible even now.

The Dream That Followed

After many restless nights spent turning over memories and wrestling with forgiveness, I finally dreamed of him.

In the dream, he was sitting on a bench, the kind of old wooden bench that feels weathered but steady. The sun was soft and warm, and there was a quietness around us like the world had paused just for that moment.

He smiled at me, not the smile of a perfect father, but the smile of a man who had carried his burdens, who had made mistakes, but still wanted connection. His eyes held something gentle, something that said I see you.

I remember feeling a strange peace in that moment, a sense that maybe this was the forgiveness I had been searching for, not in words, not in grand gestures, but in quiet presence and simple understanding.

When I woke up, the heaviness in my chest had lifted just a little. It was as if that bench that smile had reached across the distance between us and softened the edges of my grief.

Sometimes healing shows up in dreams. Sometimes it begins in places we do not expect.

A New Way to Remember

Since that dream, every time the memory of him comes to me, I smile and miss him dearly. It is a strange feeling to carry. The man I once wished could disappear, a man whom I resented deeply, is now someone I long for.

I miss him alive. Not the perfect father I imagined, but the flawed man who was still my dad.

The man whose mistakes shaped me in ways I am still trying to understand.

It is not a simple love. It is tangled with pain and regret and the years lost between us. But it is real.

I have come to realize that missing him is part of forgiving him. That love and hurt can live side by side without canceling each other out.

And in that complicated space, I find a kind of peace, a place where I can hold both my grief and my hope without feeling broken.