I'm left out of the conversation a lot, but 35 years ago today, my life changed, permanently and forever. My dad died.
Now I was about three months and two weeks old when this happened. So I don't remember him.
When people talk about the loss of him, they usually don't mention me, or how it affected me, or how my whole existence was fundamentally changed on that day.
Strangers have come up to me my entire life, expressing mourning and sadness over someone that I... never got to know. I'm jealous of those people. I'm jealous they got to know him enough to miss him. And I don't know how to empathize with someone's loss when they place the weight of my dad's absence on me, like because I am his child, I should be able to absolve them somehow of that grief. They express to me all these things about him, and I'm forced to smile awkwardly in a Walmart parking lot because I know I look a lot like this person you miss, but all I know is the absence. That's all I got out of this deal.
I spent my childhood being unlike any of the kids in my class. I remember in 5th Grade when a classmate did lose their dad and I tried to connect with them, and they told me I was "lucky" because I "didn't know what I was missing."
I grew up hating Father's Day, hating wedding scenes because I'd never have a dad to walk me down the aisle, hating "father/daughter" tropes, hating the term "daddy's girl."
35 years ago today, I got deprived of a lifetime of someone who I just *know* would have been my best friend, my biggest supporter.
And I've had to act my whole life like a whole piece of me wasn't missing. I wonder all the time, how different it might have been. How different my life would have been, how different I might have been if he'd been able to stay.
I keep his picture in my bedroom. And in my hallway.
My ghost that will eternally haunt my narrative.
He's always been here in some ways, even if I couldn't see him.
And I know parts of him live on in me, too.
