POST 8: LOSING DAD

The day I got the call was just an ordinary day. I was still sleeping when the phone rang, and I groggily picked it up, not expecting anything out of the ordinary. My aunt’s voice was on the other end, and all she said was, ‘Farid died.’ I was half-asleep, barely registering what she was saying, so I asked, ‘Who died?’ And she replied, ‘Your dad. Your dad died.’

My mind couldn’t make sense of it. Just a week ago, I saw him, hugged him. He was heading out to a construction job his firm was working on, full of life and plans. But the details didn’t matter anymore. As I hung up, still in disbelief, I made my way across my apartment to my roommate’s room. He opened the door, half-asleep, and I just stood there, feeling hollow. All I could say was, ‘My dad died,’ and then the tears came, flooding everything I’d tried to hold back.

The grief hit me like a wave, an overwhelming, suffocating weight. I realized then how much I’d left unsaid. I never got to tell him that I loved him, never got to tell him how it felt growing up without him, or how happy I was that we’d reconnected. I never got to ask him about his life, about his family, about the man he was before everything fell apart.

Those unspoken words haunted me, weighing on my heart in a way that nothing else ever had. I tried to find peace, tried writing them down in a journal, but it wasn’t enough. It felt like the words were still trapped, like he’d never hear them. That’s when I decided to create I Hope You’re Happy. I wanted a space to write him a letter, a space where maybe—somehow—those words would find their way to him. A space where others could share their own unspoken words and find a sense of release, knowing they weren’t alone.

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