Hey dad, it’s been a really long time. It hurts very much to open up that part of my mind and soul that’s missing you and acknowledge how much I’m still hurting and everything we’ve lost. I’m also still really traumatized from watching you die. I try not to think of it. I hold my breath and shake my head like I can discard the memory. But it’s inside me, burned there. Those moments. And as bad as they were, and they were truly terrible, it’s the next morning I find hardest to think about. That moment when I woke up and you were actually gone. Like you were so sick, and in pain and once I found out how terminal you were and saw how quickly you were degenerating, I thought maybe it would just be better if it happened sooner than later. But that’s not how I felt when you died.

When you died I couldn’t believe it was real. I’d never been prepared for a feeling so terrible or confusing or all-encompassing. It froze my body and physically hurt me to breathe or to open my eyes. I felt like if I was a sink full of water it was like the plug went out and I was just draining away.

When you died you were really gone, and it all happened so fast. I thought I’d be relieved you weren’t in pain anymore or that we didn’t have to care for you anymore. The morning before I had to hold your hand while you got a catheter on the living room couch. I knew you wouldn’t have wanted that, to be so vulnerable. You hated it. So I thought when you died it would come with some relief.

It did not. It was all replaced by regret. Regret that I ever had those feelings, that I’d wished you gone. I didn’t want YOU gone I wanted YOU back. I wanted the cancer gone.

Dad when you died I died. So much of me stopped because they were parts I only shared with you. They had nowhere to go. So those parts died with you. I miss you so much, dad. I find it really hard as time goes on because at first I could keep track of everything I wanted to tell you. But I have so much now, I can’t hold on to the list anymore. And it will just get bigger. Every day there will be things I think to tell you and I just can’t so they have to die. Those thoughts just have to stop there.

I feel angry a lot and I can’t always place it. I think I just still want to blame someone or something or be angry. Because I try hard nowadays not to be sad, but the sadness doesn’t go away. It just gets compact. When you first died my grief was everywhere, it lived on top of me and touched everything in my path. Now it’s cold and hard. But it’s just as much and just as real. It’s just different now.

Dad, I can’t even imagine what you would say if you were here sometimes, like what shows you would like because your taste was so strange. I could never really predict you. That’s what I liked, you were a surprising guy who had his own style. You were just really cool dad. I loved you but I liked you just as much. Even when you were being a total asshole you could always make me laugh.

I just find it so awful that that’s it for me and you. That you never get to be a part of our family ever again. That there’s no possibility you could ever come back. If there was even just a chance I could maybe see you again maybe it wouldn’t be this painful.

I’m sorry, dad. I know maybe you wouldn’t understand this; if you were here and I was grieving you would be the last person I would actually expect to get it. You would have maybe expected me to have moved on from losing you already. But I’m sorry to say it doesn’t seem like I’ve been able to yet. I feel pretty stuck, to be honest. It’s deliberate, I know that. I don’t want to have all these new memories without you dad. Every day the distance between us feels more and more uncomfortable. I want to keep you close. And I’ve talked to a lot of people, and learned what I could about grief and loss, and I don’t think that’s something I can do. I can keep you in my memories of course. I can keep the love, that’s no problem.

But I can’t keep you close daddy.

I have to accept that we used to be close.

And these days, in spite of both our best efforts, we are very, very far apart.

I’m tired of being sad, dad. I’m really exhausted of missing you. I don’t want to. I want to stop missing you. But missing you is all I have left.

Please dad. Don’t be gone anymore, okay?