A Daughter's Vigil

     Dear Dad, 

     The weight of that day still presses against my chest, like it never left. Which is why I am here once again, crafting this letter to you. A letter that I can only post in my heart while trying to make room in my mind. 

     It was May, Dad, do you still remember? When the gloomy air of spring started to give way to the relentless heat of summer. A text arrived while my mind was lost in dreams and fairytales, still hoping that this year was going to be different. I was going to make it out of my clinical depression. I decided that I, too, would not make the bed my home anymore that summer. 

     The text read: “The results are back, there needs to be an operation done on the spine. There is a mass trapping the nerves.” 

     The weight of this simple text hung heavier than the nineteen words that it carried. 

      My mind, which was always filled with thoughts, whether it was of love, life, or suicide, shattered into silence. Your words, a knife, wiped clean my mind. You always had a way to say the unspeakable with a laugh. You hid behind titter as I took refuge in metaphor. Here we were, facing a truth that neither of us was ever equipped to accept. And yet, with those few words, my world cracked open. I stared at the message, my fingers hesitating over the keyboard, grasping for certainty in the face of an unraveling reality. 

     Whose tests? 

     Tests of what? 

     Mass as in tumor? 

     Operate when? Where? 

      It took more questions, and more digital breadcrumbs of panic before you told me you were traveling to Morocco in the months that followed. But Dad, where do I lay what lingers when even the metaphors have fallen silent? 

     What do we do from here? 

     Where do I go from here? 

     No, I can’t be back here again 

     Not again, please… 

     For seven years, 7,374 miles had stretched between us, softened only by the fragile illusion of technology. On that morning, the quiet distance between us grew slowly, unnoticed like the tumor on your spine until it became unbearable. I was reminded again that it would take 2,458 days of walking for me to reach you. I was trapped, bound by international laws that did not care about the sentence that the doctor had handed down to you. Here I was trying to understand. Here I was searching for the words that could stretch across 7,374 miles and wrap you in comfort and warmth. Here I was trying to stitch the fabric of space between us into bridges. 

     On the eve of your birthday, September 1st, you met the cold light of the operating room. Before that, we spoke over video, filling the space with everything but what mattered the most. 

     We filled the space with talk about the weather. 

     We talked about my classes and deadlines. 

     We spoke about my job and money. 

     We even laughed about how bad the hospital food was. 

     You joke about how I was gaining the weight that you were losing. 

     But we never spoke of how I am to live without you. 

     Fear filled our eyes. We prayed. We held each other in words sent to Heaven, hoping that the bridge between us would hold just for a moment, long enough to cling to you, long enough to wait for dawn’s light to shine on us. Praying just to be near you through the night, to let tomorrow claim us before the Grim Reaper calls out your name. 

     For the next 25,210 seconds, I clutched my phone as if I were clinging to your soul, demanding not to be abandoned. During that time, my mind, a restless playwright, created every possible narrative for this night. I had been here before – with Mother, Cedric, Uncle Jack. Faith and hope were crimes my soul could no longer commit. I knew all too well what lay beneath the sterile sheets, a hungry mouth, swallowing breath like a beast. I have seen the souls it dragged in its abyss. Their echoes still haunt my night, teetering on the edge of my depression. 

     It was insatiable. 

     Here, faith and hope were lullabies for the deluded, and I have sung the dirge way too often to believe that you could be Hercules, emerging from the underworld unscathed. From the moment I heard the news until now, I have spent every hour pleading with God to pull you back from the shadows of death creeping ever closer. If not Hercules, perhaps Theseus – and I would be Ariadne. I would weave you a thread of prayers to bring you home. 

     For the first 14,400 seconds, I clung to promises — the doctors had sworn that you would be out by then. But as time unraveled, so did my hope. I mourned you before I even knew if I had lost you. I was convinced that you had lost the battle. 

     Aunt Nenette, perhaps, had planned to keep it from me just as you had taken 86,400 minutes to tell me of your diagnosis. Perhaps she had hoped to make it a silent walk to the grave, believing mercy lay in preparing me for your absence. As if silence could shield me. As if grief was a kindness best delivered in whispers. As if time could soften the anguish.  

     For 10,810 seconds, I grieved the only parent that I had left. I thought of all the things I wished to do for you and sometimes even I bargained for your existence. “Just this once,” I lamented as I prayed to the heavens for mercy. I went back to our conversations, still lingering on my WhatsApp screen. I replayed videos of you and analyzed your tone at each syllable. I smiled when you smiled — a velvet lie, I failed to grasp. 

     I sent message after message, demanding news, and clawing for updates. Sleep had left me stranded in the wilderness of my anxiety and worry. 

     And then, at 8:01 AM, salvation arrived in the form of a single message: 

     “They just told me that they finished the surgery and moved him to the revival room. But we need to wait another two hours to see him.” 

     Hope, which had crumbled as a sandcastle, returned whole, as if my worry had never laid siege to it. And with a sigh deep enough to empty my bones, I fell into slumber. 

     In the year that followed, I clung to you through pixels and phone calls, through the artificial closeness of the screens, you were part of my world once again. Your face, frozen on my watch and tablet was a stillness that reminded me how fleeting time truly is. 

     I knew, always, how easily you could vanish. You, too, were not immune to the shadow of life. 

     So I held on to you the only way I knew how.