« You just left me… alone, » I whispered to the photo.
Michael met my mom, Carina, when I was two. They got married in a quiet and intimate ceremony. I don’t remember the wedding or even life before him.
My earliest memory is sitting on his shoulders at the county fair, one sticky hand gripping a balloon, the other tangled in his hair.
My mom died when I was four — that’s a sentence I’ve lived with my whole life.
« You just left me… alone. »
When Michael got sick last year, I moved back into the house without hesitation. I made his food, I drove him to appointments, and I sat beside his bed when the pain turned him quiet.
I didn’t do any of it out of obligation.
I did it because he was my father in every way that mattered.
After the funeral, the house buzzed with polite murmurs and the soft clink of cutlery. Someone laughed too loudly near the kitchen, and a fork scraped a plate hard enough to turn heads.
I did it because he was my father.
