Sometimes it catches me off guard. Sitting in the car at a red light. Or standing there with a measuring tape in my hands, suddenly unsure if I needed forty or fifty centimeters. And then I feel it again. The absence. The quiet. A kind of emptiness that is not really quiet at all, because it is filled with him. My father.
A man without big words, everywhere anyway
He was not a man of big speeches or long conversations about the meaning of life. He did not believe in anything after death. For him, it simply ended. Like closing a book. No heaven, no reincarnation, nothing vague or mystical. Although he once told my sister that when we die, we go back to where we came from before we were born. So perhaps he believed more than he let on. And yet, ever since he has been gone, he seems to be everywhere.
Looking for him in small things
I find myself searching for him in the things he once touched. In the hammer in the toolbox, exactly the way he last used it. In the measuring tape with that familiar click when it rolls back in. I look for him in numbers I happen to notice on a clock, a license plate, a receipt. Always hoping for a pattern. A hidden message. A quiet sign from a place he never believed he could be.
Songs that suddenly mean something
And then there are the songs. Sometimes one comes on the radio that never meant much to me before. But now I hear it differently. I hear him humming along, see him tapping his foot softly to the rhythm. There are songs I know he secretly liked, even though he would never have admitted it. And when a certain lyric about a helicopter on a roof you cannot quite see comes by, something in my chest lifts. Because that was him. My father. My hero without a cape. With an invisible helicopter on the roof of our house. Always there. Always nearby. Calm, steady, quietly certain.
The silence after
Now that helicopter is still. But sometimes, when I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror without mascara, I see his eyes. My eyes. His gaze. For a brief moment, it feels like he is sitting next to me again, in the passenger seat, watching quietly. Not judging. Not approving. Just there.
The kind of missing that stays
I miss him. Not in a soft, poetic way. In a raw, untamed way that does not shrink with time or distraction or carefully chosen words. I miss his “man man man” when someone talked too long and too detailed. I miss his practical mind, his humor, the way everything felt simple when he was around. I miss the sound of his footsteps upstairs, his laugh from his chair, the mix of aftershave, sawdust, and coffee that somehow meant home.
The ordinary things that were everything
What I might miss most is how normal everything felt when he was still here. Having someone who would just “take a look” when you did not understand something. Someone who solved things without making a scene. Someone who never loudly declared love, but showed it in fixing a bike tire or carrying you to bed when you fell asleep in the car. Or how, even when I was already an adult, he still always held my arm for a moment when we crossed the street. Just for safety. Or saying, “come on, little frog,” when i was sad.
Did he ever know
Sometimes I wonder if he knew. If he ever realized how much he meant to me. How big he was in my eyes, while he probably felt he was just being himself. Did he know he was the steady ground beneath everything? The quiet anchor? The one constant that never felt extraordinary, but was exactly that?
Because he was.
Ordinary in the most extraordinary way.
Life moves, something stays behind
Life goes on. Days pass. People ask how I am and I say, “I’m fine.” Sometimes that is true. Sometimes it is not. There is a place inside me that will never fully be okay again. A small corner that stays a little cold, no matter how much light there is. It is the place where he lived. And even though I search for him everywhere, that space remains empty.
And yet, not entirely
And still… sometimes he feels closer than ever. In the quiet, for example. Late at night, when everyone is asleep and I am on the couch with a cup of tea. It can feel like he is sitting there beside me. Silent, like always. But present. Comforting. Sometimes I imagine him saying something, making a dry comment. And I smile, because I can almost hear him. Not just in memory, but as if something in the world briefly opened and let a small piece of him through.
What love leaves behind
Maybe that is what love does. Maybe it does not disappear, even when someone does. Maybe it lingers in everything, like dust floating in sunlight. Not something you can hold or measure, but something you can feel all the same.
So I keep looking. In songs. In memories. In numbers. In tools. In mirrors without mascara. I keep looking for him in myself. Because maybe that is what fathers do. They leave small parts of themselves behind in you. And when they are gone, something grows from that. Something that still carries them. Something that quietly reminds you that you are not alone.
The softest way of staying
And maybe that is the most beautiful way someone can remain.
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