Grief, I’ve come to learn, isn’t loud. It’s not the kind that shows up with dramatic tears or sobbing into pillows. At least, not always. Sometimes, grief tiptoes in at the most mundane moments. It lingers in the smell of a shirt you never had the chance to buy for him. It hums quietly in the background while you watch others post pictures with their fathers, smiling, alive, present.
And here I am, heart in hand, offering prayers instead of gifts.
Today is Father’s Day, and I don’t have new memories to make with you, Abah. No lunch dates. No messages to type. No hands to hold. Just this endless ache I’ve learned to carry like second skin—softened by time, maybe, but never really gone.
You left when I was too young to understand what a father truly is, but not too young to know what it meant to love one. What I remember of you comes in fragments—like a half-developed photograph, edges blurred by time. A laugh I can’t fully hear anymore. A warmth I try to replicate in people who could never be you. But some things stayed with me—like the scent of you coming home from work, rich with spices and the comfort of something cooking, lingering in your shirt like love I could smell. I remember tracing the scars on your chest from your heart surgery with my tiny fingers, not yet understanding the weight of what they meant—only that they were part of you, and that was enough. These memories are few, but they are stitched into the fabric of who I am. And though they’ve faded at the edges, the love never has. That part of you never left.
And yet, there’s something cruelly kind about grief. It reminds me I had something real. That you were real. That my love for you still lives, even if you don’t.
Some days I wish you were here, if only to tell me you’re proud. To see the woman I’m becoming and remind me it’s okay to rest. To stand by me when I doubt myself. Other days, I’m thankful you don’t have to witness the heartbreaks and harshness of this world. That Allah took you early, maybe out of mercy. Maybe as a test. Maybe both.
But every single day, Abah, I miss you. I miss you in the moments I’m supposed to be strongest. I miss you in the quiet. In the dua at the end of every prayer. In the silence that follows when no one else can fill the space you left.
This Father’s Day, I don’t celebrate with cards or cakes. I celebrate by remembering—however soft, however fragmented those memories may be. I was just a child when you left, too young to hold onto vivid pictures, but not too young to feel love. The details may blur with time, but the ache of missing you never has. I grieve not only what was, but everything we never got to have. I love you the only way I still can: through the weight of longing, through whispered prayers, and through the quiet hope that one day, in a place without goodbyes, I’ll see you again.
Until then, Al-Fatihah for you, Abah.
I’ll spend a lifetime missing you.
Your first princess
