Son

Hey, Dad. I wrote you something.

I know you'll probably never be able to read this. And even if I sat in front of you and read every word out loud, I don't know how much of it you would understand.

Still, I needed to write it.

Not to explain your illness. Not to make anyone feel sorry for you or for me. I just needed to find a way to put everything we've been through into words. To give these past few months some kind of shape and, perhaps, find a little relief from a sadness I still don't know what to do with.

Maybe nobody will ever read this. And that's okay.

But I want it to exist somewhere on the Internet. A record of you, of us, and of what I'm going through. And if someone experiencing something similar ever finds these words, I hope they find something that makes them feel understood.

Before talking about what happened to you, I want to talk about who you are.

You're an honest man. Truly honest. In the most literal sense of the word. Hardworking, active, kind, incredibly sociable. A gentleman.

You loved cooking. You loved driving. You were always doing something.

You're eighty now, but until just a few months ago, you looked twenty years younger.

Our relationship was never the kind where a father and son hug all the time or constantly tell each other how much they love one another. There was always a certain distance between us. A way of relating that I think you learned from your own father and, without meaning to, passed on to me.

But that distance was never absence.

I could always talk to you. Tell you about my problems, be honest about what I was going through, ask for advice, or simply find someone willing to listen.

I always knew I could count on you.

I have a few memories from when I was a kid. Going fishing together. Riding in the car, you driving and me sitting beside you.

They're simple memories. Nothing extraordinary about them. But they're ours.

And today, I'd give so much to go back to one of those drives. Not to talk about anything important. Just to be there again, with you behind the wheel.

This year, 2026, everything changed.

I still struggle to understand how quickly it happened. There was no time to adjust to one thing before the next arrived.

Alzheimer's and dementia began taking pieces of you away at a speed I never imagined possible. A speed even the doctors struggled to understand.

Your body changed. Your expression changed. The way you moved, spoke, looked at things, existed in the world.

The man who looked sixty at eighty suddenly began to show his age.

But the physical changes, as painful as they are to witness, aren't the worst part.

The worst part is missing so much of who you used to be while you're still sitting right in front of me.

And yet, even after all this decline, there's something that hasn't changed.

You're still you.

Still a gentleman. Kind, thoughtful, attentive to others. There are gestures, small details of who you are, that the illness still hasn't managed to take away.

And that makes everything even harder to understand.

Because I can see you, touch you, talk to you, and still recognize the man I've always known. But at the same time, I miss the conversations, the moments, and everything we used to be able to share.

There's something especially cruel about that contradiction.

Having you here while feeling the absence of so much of the life we shared.

And while all of this is happening, my life keeps moving forward.

I'm at a point in my life when so many things I've imagined for years are finally becoming real.

Things I've accomplished. Decisions that took years to make. Dreams that once felt far away and that I finally managed to turn into something real.

The kind of things you want to tell your father about.

Like finishing a book, planting a tree, or building something you know will last for years after you're gone.

Not because you need his approval. Not even because you expect congratulations.

Simply because you want him to be part of it.

To see what you've done. To understand what it means. To share that happiness with you.

I think that's what hurts me most about all of this.

Not being able to share such an important part of my adult life with you.

Not having more time to get to know each other from a different place, as two adults. To talk about things I didn't understand before. To ask questions I never imagined I'd someday want to ask you.

To tell you who I am today.

The illness didn't just take your memories.

It took moments we hadn't even lived yet.

And somehow, in the middle of all this, something happens that I still struggle to explain.

When I come to see you, you're surprised.

You're happy.

Your eyes light up.

Sometimes you say my name. Other times, when we're talking on the phone and one of those brief moments of clarity finds its way back to you, you ask me:

“How are you doing, son?”

You have no idea what hearing those words means to me.

There are people who have been part of your entire life whom you no longer seem to recognize. But with me, for some reason I don't understand, something is still there.

I don't know how much you remember about me.

I don't know if you recognize me in the way I understand that word, or if there's simply something familiar about my voice, my face, my presence.

All I know is that when you see me, something changes.

And it breaks me.

Because we were never particularly expressive. We never had that kind of relationship where we were constantly together, openly sharing everything we felt.

And now, among so many things that have disappeared, you still seem to know that I'm your son.

It's a contradiction that's difficult to live with.

It makes me happy to see you happy when I arrive. And it destroys me to think about everything that had to disappear for such a small gesture to become so important to me.

I don't know how much longer it will last.

And some days, I'd rather not think about it.

I also think a lot about your own story.

In my attempt to make sense of all this, to understand it somehow, I started looking back. Searching your story for something that might help me understand your present a little better.

I think about all the things you may never have been able to resolve. The wounds you perhaps never had the tools to heal. Everything you carried with you for so many years and maybe never managed to fully leave behind.

And now it makes complete sense to me that, faced with all of that, the only way you found to protect yourself was to retreat into yourself. To build enormous walls, so high and so solid that nothing and no one could get through. Maybe that was the only way you knew to escape what hurt you, to keep at a distance everything you never learned how to face.

I think I understand a little better now the distance that sometimes existed between us. Not because the love wasn't there, but because those walls may have become part of the way you moved through the world.

I wish you'd found more peace with all of that.

I wish life had been a little kinder to you.

I don't have an explanation for what happened. All I know is that it feels profoundly unfair.

You were a healthy, strong man, full of life. And it hurts so much to see you going through this stage of your life this way.

That this is happening to you.

That we have to see you like this.

That after so many years of work, of effort, of being the person you were, life has brought you here.

If I could sit down and talk to you one more time, knowing you understood every word I was saying, I'd want to repeat something I've already told you.

Something I wish you'd been fully present to hear.

I love you, Dad.

And I'm deeply grateful for the father you are and for everything you've given me.

For teaching me the value of hard work. For teaching me to tell the truth. For showing me that honesty isn't something you practice when it's convenient, but a way of living.

So much of who I am today comes from you.

And even if you can no longer see or understand it the way I wish you could, those values are with me every day.

They'll stay with me for the rest of my life.

I don't really know how to end this letter.

It's not a goodbye. You're still here.

But I can't pretend nothing has changed, or try to find something positive in all of this just to make it easier to accept.

I miss my dad.

I miss him even when I'm sitting right in front of him.

I miss the conversations we used to have. The way you listened. Those drives when you were behind the wheel and I was looking out the window.

And more than anything, I miss the possibility of sharing with you the person I'm becoming.

There's so much I still wish I could tell you.

But for now, I'll keep coming to see you.

I'll keep talking to you, even when I don't know how much you understand.

And every time you're happy to see me, every time you look at me with those eyes that still seem to find something familiar, I'll try to hold on to that moment.

Without pretending it makes up for everything else.

Because it doesn't.

I don't know how much of our story remains in your memory.

But all of it is still in mine.

You're still my dad.

And I'm still your son.