The Dad I Miss Never Really Existed — But I Miss Him Anyway

Since my dad passed, living in his house has been like walking through a memory I never actually had.

It’s wild, we didn’t have a relationship for years. Most of my life, actually. He wasn’t the dad I needed him to be, and I wasn’t the daughter who knew what to do with that kind of wound.

But now… I live in this house he left behind.

And I feel something I didn’t expect: gratitude.

Gratitude for the roof over my head. For the way the light hits the kitchen table in the morning. For the trees he planted. For the quiet corners where my life is starting to feel like mine again.

This home, in so many ways, became the foundation I’m finally learning how to build on.

It’s strange.

The dad I miss, the one who left this house for me, is not the same man I grew up with.

The version I ache for now… is more like a dream. A hopeful imagining. The father I wished he could’ve been.

The protector. The guide. The soft place to land.

He wasn’t those things.

But somehow, through grief and time and presence, the energy in this space has softened.

And the house itself has become a kind of reconciliation.

Some days, I feel him here.

Not as the man who couldn’t show up…

But as the one who did, in this strange, delayed way, by leaving something behind that I can finally feel safe in.

I used to carry resentment.

Now, I carry appreciation.

And that shift, that alchemy, feels like a kind of healing I didn’t even know I needed.

I’m creating something beautiful in the space he left.

And maybe… just maybe… that’s the relationship we were meant to have all along.

I honor the complexity of my grief. I am allowed to feel love for what never was, and gratitude for what remains. I am safe to build a life of beauty and wholeness, even in the echoes of the past.