After The Last Embrace

“When My Father Left, Something in Me Fell Silent”

It wasn’t only his body that went still. It was his laughter. His scent. The way he said my name. The way he existed quietly, yet held everything together.

The day he died, I didn’t just lose my father. I lost a part of myself that only existed with him. I lost the place I could always return to — even when the world broke me.

A father’s death isn’t lived in a single moment. It comes in waves. In the first birthday without his call. In the first big decision without his advice. In the first time you need to hear “everything will be okay” and know it won’t come. It lives in the details — in the gestures, in the small absences that grow enormous.

I loved him. Not like in the stories. I loved him with all that we were — with our differences, our arguments, our quiet reconciliations. I loved him because he was my father. Because he taught me things without knowing it. Because he cared in his own way. Because he gave what he could. Because he gave what he had.

And now that he’s gone, I struggle to make sense of the world. I struggle to accept that he won’t come back. That he won’t see what I’m building. That he won’t meet my children, if I have them. That he won’t be in the moments I once dreamed of sharing with him. I struggle to accept that time doesn’t wait. That death doesn’t warn. That love doesn’t always get the chance to say goodbye.

There are days I feel him near — in a phrase I repeat without realizing, in a song he liked, in a way of looking I inherited without knowing. And there are others when I miss him so much it hurts to breathe — when I wonder if I was enough, if I made him proud, if he knew how much I loved him.

The death of a father is a grief that never ends. It shifts. It settles. It becomes part of you — but it doesn’t disappear. Because he was part of my story. Part of my roots. Part of my identity. And now that part is empty. Not broken. Not destroyed. Empty. Silent. Sacred.

I write this for you — for everyone who has lost their father, for those who still look for him in dreams, for those who carry him in their skin, their voice, their soul. Because your pain matters. Because your story deserves to be told. Because your love doesn’t fade with death.

🌿 Another Perspective: How to See the Loss of a Father

Your father didn’t leave completely. He lives in you — in your gestures, in your words, in your way of loving, in your way of enduring. He’s not here physically, but he’s in every part of you he ever touched.

Don’t force yourself to be okay. Grief has no schedule. No shape. No logic. Cry when you need to. Remember when you want to. Speak of him without fear.

Your love doesn’t need to be justified — even if it wasn’t perfect, even if there were things left unsaid, even if there were wounds. Love is bigger than all of that.

And though it hurts today, that pain is also proof that you were loved, that your story had roots, that your heart knows what it means to belong.

🤍 From Me to You

If you’re reading this with a broken soul, if you’ve lost your father and don’t know how to keep going, I want you to know — I’m with you.

I’ve felt that emptiness too. I’ve searched for his voice in the silence. I’ve cried for what will never return.

And here I am, writing for you — so you don’t have to pretend. So you know your pain has a place. That your story matters. That your love still lives.

You’re not alone. You’re not broken. You’re grieving.

And here, your grief is embraced.

I embrace you from here,

— Luz 🤍