Grief, Love, and Father’s Day

Two years ago, I lost my dad after a long, painful two-year battle with lung cancer. He fought hard—harder than I thought was humanly possible—but in the end, cancer took more than his breath. It took his laughter, his advice, his quiet strength that anchored my world. And now, as Father’s Day approaches once again, I find myself overwhelmed in a way that’s both familiar and new. I think last year it was still so surreal and here we are , year two and it feels more real than ever that he is gone.

Grief is strange like that. It doesn’t leave when the flowers wilt or when the casseroles stop showing up at your door. It doesn’t care about how many months or years have passed. Some days, I carry it like a quiet companion tucked into my coat pocket. Other days, like this weekend, it crashes through me with no warning, like a wave I never saw coming.

What they don’t tell you about grief is that it reshapes you. You become someone different. Not necessarily broken, but rearranged. There’s a before and after. The person I was before my dad got sick, and the person I am now—who knows what it means to watch someone you love fade away and still have to keep moving through a world that expects you to be okay.

I’m a medium. I speak with Spirit every day—including my dad. And that connection brings a kind of peace that I’m endlessly grateful for. I feel his energy. I know when he’s close. I hear his guidance in ways that bring comfort to me. But still… I miss his physical presence. I miss the warmth of his hugs, the sound of his voice in a room, the way he used to just be here. No amount of spiritual connection can replace what it feels like to sit next to someone you love and know they’re just a breath away. That ache doesn’t go away—it just becomes part of who I am.

Grief doesn’t follow a timeline. It’s not linear, and it doesn’t obey logic. There are moments, even now, when I reach for the phone to call him. Or I’ll see someone in the crowd with his walk, his stance, and I lose my breath for a moment. It’s like your heart remembers, even when your brain knows better.

But in the middle of the pain, there’s something else, too—love. A love that didn’t die when he did. It shows up in unexpected places: in the jokes I still hear in his voice, in the things I know he’d say, in the values he planted so deeply in me that I live them without thinking. That’s the paradox of grief—it hurts because the love was real. It still is.

This weekend will be hard. I know that. I’ll probably cry. I’ll miss him in a way that aches in my bones. But I’ll also remember him. Not just as the man who got sick, but the one who taught me what strength looks like, who loved me without needing to say it every time, because I just knew.

To anyone else out there missing a father this Father’s Day—you’re not alone. Whether your grief is fresh or years deep, it matters. Your pain is valid. And the love you carry, though silent and unseen, is a tribute to the one you lost.

We don’t “get over” grief. We grow around it. We learn to carry it. We live with it.

And in some strange, quiet way, that means they’re still with us too.

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