Goodbye Dad, I Love You.

Daddy,

You were the first man I ever loved—to keep me safe and warm, and to show me what it meant to be loved in return.

The fact that I’m writing this means the most unbearable thing is true—that your journey here on Earth has come to an end. I’ve spent the past few days trying to encapsulate what you meant to me and make it palatable for the masses, but the truth is, it’s not easy to fold our 38 years together neatly into a box, so I won’t try to. It wouldn’t capture every nuance, and it wouldn’t let me grieve the relationship we had alongside the one I wish we had but didn’t.

Love—real human love—is often messy. It can begin with warmth, and despite our best intentions, still leave us wounded and wishing that things were different.

When I was younger, I thought you hung the moon. I was your little girl; you were my everything. You protected, supported, and cared for me, and provided constant opportunities for fun and adventure, especially outdoors. You were born to be a dad and took great pride in it, nurturing every strength and interest my siblings and I had, while enthusiastically sharing your own. Life changed, and as I grew older, the harder it became for you to be the dad I needed. But this never diminished my love for you. It just complicated it.

You were filled with goodness. Beneath that rough-hewn exterior, lived a sensitive soul who felt more deeply than most. All our differences aside, I inherited this from you, even as our methods of handling vulnerability diverged greatly. I feel things all the way through. You, ever the fixer and builder, constructed walls that often felt too high to climb. With your mechanical mind, you had an innate understanding of the hums and rattles of an engine, yet struggled to tend to the workings of the heart. This cost us precious time. Despite our clashes, there is one simple truth: we had a deep, unyielding love for each other.

Now I’m left to contend with the beauty and the pain. One day, I will choose only to hold the tenderness that lives somewhere in between.

I love you bigger than the whole wide world, Daddy, and I always will.