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A man with a deep stare | Source: Midjourney
My voice was barely a whisper, ragged with years of unsaid grief. “She asked the teacher today,” I confessed to the silent room. “She asked why you don’t do the dad stuff. Why I do.”
A single tear traced a path down my cheek, cold and stark against my skin. There was no flicker in his eyes, no subtle shift in his expression, no recognition in the depths of those dilated pupils. Just the vacant stare I’ve grown so accustomed to.
He’s been like this for three years. Since the accident.
My daughter has never known the man he was before the massive stroke. She’s only ever known him as the quiet, unmoving figure who stares at walls, who breathes, who exists, but who is no longer her dad.
A woman in an armchair | Source: Midjourney
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A woman in an armchair | Source: Midjourney
And I’ve been pretending to her, to myself, to the world, that he’s just “indisposed.” That he’s just “tired.”
Because how do you tell a six-year-old that her dad is still here, but he’s gone? That the father she sees every day is just a body I care for, a fragile, living memorial to the man I loved, to the life we lost?
How do you tell her that her father is still breathing in that chair, but he’s been in a persistent vegetative state since she was three?
And the real, horrifying truth? That I’ve been living a lie so profound, so devastating, because I don’t know how to stop. And because, deep down, a part of me believes that as long as he’s still here, even like this, then I haven’t truly lost him. And neither has she.
A dark figure standing in a doorway | Source: Midjourney
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