Love and grief: A decade

Grief is not linear. People say that all the time, but living it is something else. It’s been ten years since my dad passed away. Ten years of learning how to exist in a world where he does not. At first, grief was a childlike question: Is death really permanent? I was too young to fully grasp the weight of the answer, too inexperienced in loss to comprehend that “gone” meant never again.

The day I found out, my stomach twisted, my mind rejected the words, and my world felt suddenly impossible. How could I continue living without the option of seeing him? I had never lost someone close before, and the concept of death had always been a distant thing, something that happened to other people. But when grief enters your home, it doesn’t knock. It just walks in and stays.

I’m not writing this to relive the pain. I’m writing this because time does something strange to grief. It doesn’t erase it, it doesn’t soften it, it just changes the way it sits inside you. Some days, I go without thinking about him. Other days, especially the hard ones, I wonder how much easier life would be if he were here. I don’t romanticize my grief, but I do acknowledge it.

I’ve never gone looking for the details of his passing. Maybe because I already know too well what loss feels like, and I don’t need more imagery of his absence. New details don’t bring him back. They just reinforce that he is no longer here.

But grief is not just absence it’s also love. My wonderful girlfriend gifted me an album full of images of my loved ones, and one picture of my dad stands out. It holds something deep, something I’ve longed for, fatherhood, manhood, the masculinity I’ve sought after. A simple image, yet it carries so much of what I miss. It is a gift of love and grief, intertwined in a way that I can’t separate.

These days, grief feels different. It’s not that it has faded, but rather, it has become something more subtle, less consuming but still present. It’s the acknowledgment of inexistence, a quiet understanding that he is not here and never will be. But the love remains.

Every achievement, every milestone, every moment where I push forward in life, there is still a part of me that wishes for his approval. Not because I need validation, but because I want it from him. Because love and grief are not opposites. They are the same thing, woven together in memory and longing.

Ten years later, I don’t just grieve. I remember. I carry. I love.