I Will Be in my Blanket Fort Until Monday

Send chocolate.

“What do you think of this one?” I asked my dad, twirling the skirt with the tiny black lightning bolts scattered across the gingham pattern.

He squinted at it from the couch, eyes tired but still sharp.

“Well, that is cool shit,” he said with a smirk and two thumbs up.

Lightning bolts were his symbol during his battle with cancer.

I needed his approval because that was the skirt I planned to wear to his memorial. And somehow, even in all his pain, he gave it. That moment, that blessing, it meant everything.

It was our last Father’s Day together.

He wasn’t feeling well.

His pain was high—radiating deep in his bones, a cruel aftershock of his cancer’s spread. Months earlier, through tears, he’d told me, “I wish it hadn’t gone into my bones. This shit hurts.”

He wasn’t exaggerating.

It did hurt.

All of it.

His body.

My heart.

The way he couldn’t hug us anymore because even touch had become too painful. Radiation had fried his nerves. Neuropathy had turned hugs into agony. And I knew those shocks intimately—I have them too. So, I didn’t press for more than he could give. But even through the fog of pain, he insisted on photos that day.

Because he knew.

And I knew.

That this was it.

So we took the photos.

We tried to smile.

We tried to hold the day in our hands without letting it shatter. It was painful and beautiful, lovely and gutting. I tried to soak up every second, even while the grief whispered its warning that this was goodbye in slow motion.

And now, here I am. Another Father’s Day without him.

My second one.

And it still profoundly sucks.

He never really cared for the holiday. Thought it was a bit silly. But I’d send him goofy cards and small gifts anyway because it gave us a reason to connect, to laugh, to remember that we belonged to each other.

I’d give anything to send one more.

Now, I just want to crawl into a blanket fort with chocolate and hibernate until Monday.

I don’t want the emails.

The ads.

The reminders that the world still spins for other people, while mine carries this missing piece.

We’re creeping closer to two years now.

Two years since he left this world.

It doesn’t seem possible.

Grief lives in my ribs now.

It’s stitched between each breath.

A quiet ache. A loud absence.

A love that never left.

So I breathe. I scroll through the photos.

I laugh. I ugly cry.

And I remember.

Because he is my dad.

And I am his daughter.

And that love?

That stays.

I love you, Daddy.