A reflective exploration of grief and love on Father’s Day, highlighting the enduring presence of a father through memories and dreams.
Not long ago, I shared a quiet moment with my husband that, while not dramatic, lingered in my mind long after it passed. I mentioned, almost casually, that I hadn’t dreamt of my father in weeks. It wasn’t alarming; it was simply unfamiliar.
For a significant time after his passing, my father would visit me in dreams—sometimes in fragments, other times in full conversations that felt more real than waking life. Then, suddenly, there was silence. No dreams, no gentle appearances, just an absence that echoed in my heart.
As I expressed my thoughts, I began to understand the reason behind this silence. I had been living in survival mode. During a recent trip to Las Vegas for a Health Conference, I returned home feeling unwell and overwhelmed. My days were filled with responsibilities: grading finals, completing a manuscript, meeting with family, and rescheduling commitments that my body could no longer handle. Although my days were productive and outwardly successful, they were tightly packed, leaving no room for stillness, no space to feel, remember, or allow grief to surface.
Then one morning, something shifted. The deadlines had been met, my body relaxed, and my nervous system, almost imperceptibly, exhaled. It was in that quiet moment that my father returned to me.
In my dream, he looked at me with the same gentle warmth I had known all my life and asked a simple question: “Halwaa-puri khaogi?” (Will you eat halwa-puri?). This dish, one of my favorites, is tied to comfort, home, and the intimacy of being cared for without needing to ask.
He smiled and reminded me of a trip from a few years ago when my friends and I visited him in Pune. “It was my favorite, beta,” he said. In that dream, there was no heaviness, no sense of loss—only presence, memory, and a quiet kind of joy.
Upon waking, I realized that grief does not operate on demand. It does not adhere to our schedules or the expectations we place on healing. Grief is patient; it waits until the body and mind have created enough safety to receive it. Even now, my father seemed to have waited until I was no longer holding everything together before he appeared again—not to remind me of loss, but to encourage me to pause, celebrate, feel, and remember.
That morning, I stepped onto my yoga mat for the first time in what felt like ages. It was not an act of discipline but one of presence. I allowed myself to be with my breath, my body, and the quiet echo of my father’s presence lingering from the dream.
My father had an extraordinary relationship with memory. He never forgot a birthday or an anniversary, on either side of the family. We often joked about him being our “human calendar.” Beneath that humor lay something deeper; he made people feel remembered, seen, valued, and held in his awareness.
After his passing, I tried to carry that trait forward. However, I began to notice something difficult to reconcile. Unless prompted by social media or a group message, very few people actually remember important moments in their lives. Grief sharpens perception, removing layers of polite reasoning and revealing a quieter truth. When something or someone matters to you, you remember; when you don’t, that absence carries its own meaning.
In the first year after losing a parent, grief is often described as a longing for the person who is no longer there. That longing is real and profound. This Father’s Day was heart-wrenching, with no one to call.
Yet, there is another layer that is spoken about less often: the disappointment in others, the clarity that comes from seeing relationships as they truly are. It is the realization that not everyone holds the same depth of care, attentiveness, or commitment to showing up.
Even this realization evolves. Gradually, grief begins to shift. It is no longer solely about the person you have lost; it also encompasses the version of yourself that existed before that loss—the version that expected more from others and equated love with external validation and remembrance.
Letting go of that version is its own kind of grief, but it also opens new possibilities. What emerges is not detachment or cynicism, but a quieter form of clarity. You begin to understand where your energy belongs, becoming more intentional about the relationships you nurture and the expectations you release. You start to advocate for yourself, not in a loud or confrontational manner, but in ways that are grounded and deeply self-respecting.
In this sense, grief becomes a teacher. It teaches you to show up, not perfectly, but consciously. It encourages you to remember others not out of obligation but because you choose to. It guides you to extend care from a place of authenticity rather than duty, and to turn that same care inward.
This Father’s Day, I find myself in a different relationship with grief. It is no longer something I am trying to resolve or move beyond. It is something I carry with me, continuing to shape my perspective in quiet, meaningful ways.
There will be no phone call this year, no familiar voice marking the day. But there will be a presence, gratitude, and the steady awareness that love does not disappear with absence; it changes form. It finds new ways to reach us through memory, the body, moments of stillness, and sometimes through dreams that arrive when we are finally ready to receive them.
Wherever my father is, I hope he knows that I remember him—not because I was reminded, but because he taught me what it means to hold people in your awareness with care and intention. His way of being in the world continues to live through me in how I pause, how I care, and how I choose to show up.
And in that, perhaps, nothing has truly been lost.
According to India Currents.