It was a hot and sunny day in August. My father, my ex-fiancé and I went to one of the parks in the Northern Ukraine. I had to write a report for the Landscape and Design magazine I worked at the time. We had an informative tour with a guide around the park, took some pictures and drove back to Kyiv.
My dad dropped us off at our place and was about to head home when he said: “I love you SO much, my treasure!” I said that I loved him too.
Those were his last words to me.
That night my mom called and said that my beloved daddy suddenly passed away of a heart attack. He died on her hands. When they told me, I remember the weird feeling of the world stopping. I felt like I was a character in a horror movie. And someone pressed the STOP button.
I have survived the overwhelming grief only because I was 7 months pregnant then, and I had to think about my baby. I cried days and nights; I don’t know how I broke through this tragedy.
You know, time doesn’t heal, all it does is placing some type of a patch on the hole in your heart. But it never sews the hole. Loosing someone close is a deep scar. At certain point the wound stops bleeding, but the skin will never be the same again, the stitches are left forever.
It has been almost 11 years since I got one more guardian-angel. I miss him everyday. I still cry when no one sees. But I keep on making him proud. And thank him for the years of unconditional love and support he had always provided me with. Specially today, on #fathersday2021.
Those we love don’t go away; they walk beside us every day. Unseen, unheard, but always near, so loved, so missed, so very dear…
#fathersday2021 , #dadsmatter, #dadsday, #forevergrateful
Ukrainian in Philly 