Happy Birthday, Dad.

You didn’t get older, but I did, and I have carried you with me for forty-one years.

I was eleven when you left, way too young to understand what it meant to lose a father, only old enough to feel the sudden absence of your voice, your presence, your steadiness, and most importantly, your fun and shenanigans. You were only thirty. I didn’t yet know that grief doesn’t disappear…it waits until we have the language and the safety to feel it fully.

I’ve learned that your death and the loss of you from my life are something I will never get over. And that’s okay, because my feelings haven’t lessened; they’ve changed shape over time. Grief doesn’t shrink the loss; it expands the contrast, I have come to understand. Each year makes clearer the age you never reached, the moments you never saw, and the woman I became without you. That widening gap is why birthdays can feel especially sharp. It’s not the absence that grows; it’s the awareness of it.

My love keeps reaching forward, even when time does not. You are eternally thirty, but I am still becoming. I carry you, your spirit, and your love through it all.

You are 71 today. Forever young and always with me. XO