Father’s Day arrives like an old song playing from another room.

 

You aren't expecting it, but suddenly there it is—

soft at first, 

then loud enough to stop you where you're standing.

 

I miss my dad every day. 

But on days like these, the missing has edges.

I miss his singing. The way a laugh could take hold of his whole body. The smell of Coors Light and Patrón lingering in the summer air. The wonderfully unfiltered hippie observations that made everyone roll their eyes before realizing he was somehow right.

I miss being known by someone who witnessed nearly every version of me.

The little girl with scraped knees.

The teenager convinced she knew everything.

The woman still collecting stories she wishes she could bring home.

 

Because that's what grief has become for me—

not the absence of him, 

but the accumulation of things I cannot tell him.

 

A painting finished.

 

A joke he'd appreciate.

 

A heartbreak survived.

 

A life continuing.

 

I imagine him somewhere just beyond the reach of the conversation, 

still humming, still laughing, still interrupting with some wildly unrelated thought he'd insist was important.

 

And maybe it was.

 

Father's Day makes me realize that love does not leave cleanly. 

It settles into the walls.

It hides in old photographs. 

It slips into your voice without permission. 

It becomes the way you tell stories, the music you choose, the parts of yourself you didn't realize were inherited.

 

My father is gone,

 

 and yet he remains everywhere.

 

In every song I stop to listen to.

In every stubborn piece of me.

In every beautiful thing I feel compelled to create.

 

The world calls this Father's Day.

 

For me, it is simply another day of carrying him.

 

Like a melody I no longer hear with my ears, but somehow still know by heart. ❤️