Today, October 6th, weighs on me with a gravity that is impossible to ignore. There is a heaviness in my chest, a subdued ache that settles into my bones—today is a day that always returns, no matter how much time has passed. This afternoon, I found myself sitting in the pulmonologist’s office, discussing the next steps in managing my sleep apnea. My compassionate doctor checked my CPAP machine, encouraged me for the progress I’ve made, and spoke patiently about the importance of sleep hygiene. But as he spoke, my mind drifted—caught in a tapestry of memory and longing. The irony never escapes me: my father’s life was cut short by a cruel lung disease, Pulmonary Hypertension, and here I am, decades later, sitting in a clinic surrounded by the advances that might have given him a different future, a future we will never know. The world has changed so much, medicine has leaped forward, but the past remains untouchable and irreversible—a wish that aches with its impossibility.

 

This day marks the final hours I would ever have with my father. I remember it with a clarity that is both a blessing and a curse—the day before he was taken from us, sent away by ambulance, never to return home. It was in those fragile hours of October 7th, 1986, at 4:30 AM, that the phone rang, shattering our lives. We rushed to the hospital, desperate and unprepared, only to be met with the kind of news that splits a life into “before” and “after.”

 

That morning, before the sun painted the sky, my childhood ended with a single phone call and my mother’s piercing screams. Thirty-nine years have passed, and still, the ripples of that moment are felt in every corner of my being. The older I become, the more I feel the depth and weight of his absence—it’s as if grief has woven itself into every cell, demanding my surrender, claiming space in my body, soul, and mind.

 

Grief has never left me. It has always been with me.

 

Our grief, the grief of adults who lost a parent as children, is a journey through shifting landscapes—it is invisible and silent at first, then grows in force and clarity as we pass from one phase of life to the next. There is no expiration date on our sorrow. We carry it through every milestone, every joy and disappointment, every quiet moment when we wish for a voice, a guiding hand, a father’s or mother’s embrace.

 

Tonight, as darkness falls, I will honor my father. I will light a candle—maybe two—in his memory. I will speak his name, Alem Dellele Taffere, aloud to those I love, refusing to let the passing of years diminish the truth of my loss or the power of his presence in my life. Unlike in the past, I will not apologize for the tears that still come, or the longing that has not faded. My father, forever 36, lives on in the stories I tell, in the space he left behind, and in the love that refuses to yield to time. This grief is my inheritance, my companion, and the testament to a bond that not even death can erase.