If He Had Turned 67.
Today, my father would have been 67. Instead, he has been gone for eleven years. He died in his 50s. Fifties. An age we now call "still young". An age we assume we will reach. An age we assume we will surpass. Time is arrogant when you are young. It sits beside you and whispers, "relax. There is plenty of me". There isn't. When I was a child, I saw my father through the eyes of a daughter. Now, I see him through the eyes of a woman. And it changes everything. He was not a perfect father. He did not always say the right things. He did not always do the right things. He was not gentle when he should have been, nor was he strong when I needed him to be. But now, as an adult, I see something else. I see a man who was always sick. a body that betrayed him. A mind that carried more than it should have. A man raised in a world that did not teach boys how to cry, how to heal, and how to process trauma. I see now what I could not see then. He was not just a fa...
