This day always finds its way back to me, quiet as a little cloud that won’t quite pass.
This is my dad. He died 44 years ago today.
I carry only a handful of memories of him — I was just three.
A smile like a future unfinished, like a promise life wasn’t ready to keep.
I do grow a bit melancholy on this day.
That’s the honest truth of it.
But I’ve made a quiet commitment to keep moving forward —
to become, each day, a slightly better man than the one I was yesterday.
My life crossed his finish line far too soon,
yet my own road still stretches out before me.
There’s struggle in it, surely — but I mean to savour the journey
while these wheels keep turning.
I sometimes wonder who I might have been if I had known him.
That answer will always live just beyond reach.
So instead, I work to be steady in myself —
to stand firm because I had to —
and in some small way,
to finish what he never had the chance to.
And to Lorraine —
for carrying the weight of two hearts — when one was taken too soon.
She kept me safe from darker roads, and without ever naming it,
she guided me gently toward acceptance, toward a kinder, steadier kind of manhood.
So I’ll keep trying. One day at a time.
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