“I had my chance at love,” he once told me. “I was lucky enough to have your mother. I don’t need anything else.”
I understood why he felt that way, and I never pressured him to move on. Grief doesn’t follow a schedule, and I believed he deserved to heal in his own time.
Then, after more than a decade of living alone, something unexpected happened.
My father decided he was ready to give love another chance.
At first, I was thrilled for him.
I thought perhaps he had finally reached a point where he could remember my mother with happiness rather than only sadness. Maybe he was beginning to understand that loving someone new wouldn’t erase the life he had shared with her.
He created a profile on a dating app, updated a few photographs, and began talking to women around his age.
For the first time in years, I saw a little excitement return to his life.
