01/14/2026
A few rambling thoughts on 3 years without you….
I still can’t wrap my head around the phrase “my father is dead” because you are fully alive in my mind and heart. But if I sit with the thought long enough, it takes my breath away.
The most unexpected moments can bring a flood of tears, a reminder that grief never goes away. Grief is love… and if love is forever, grief is too. My grief is woven into the fabric of my being and I am changed for the better because of it.
There is also joy. Life is beautiful, and I feel lucky to share joyful experiences with loving and supportive people in my life. Alongside that joy lives the sadness of not being able to share it with you, and the wondering of how life might be different if you were still here. Carl Jung wrote that learning how to hold the tension of opposites is necessary for growth and individuation. Living with the tension of grief and joy has stretched my heart, allowing me to hold so much more.
When I see people who look like you I enter an imaginal realm where we are together. The absence of your physical presence is still so hard to accept but I like to believe that in some parallel universe it’s 1985, we’re down the shore, swimming, and you’re lifting me high over your head as each wave rolls in.
I am deeply aware of how close I now stand to losing the people I love, and that I too will one day leave this earth. That truth has paralyzed me, at times, but mostly it reminds me how precious life is. And so, I do my best each day to live fully, to embrace all of my humanness… the joy, anger, resentment, fear, love, frustration, all of it. Even the sh*ttiest moments that I want to rush through, I remind myself, “Embrace this, Gina. This is life. This is what it means to be alive. FEEL ALL OF IT.”
I’m so grateful for this life and especially for you, daddy. I miss you more than words can say.
