The day after my dad’s funeral, a mysterious package arrived at our door — addressed to me, from him. What I found inside pulled me out of grief and into something far more powerful than goodbye.
I’m a 21-year-old female in college. And for most of my life, I thought I was the “lucky” kind of unlucky.
But when I received my dad’s final gift for me, his loving words left me certain that I wasn’t unlucky at all.
My parents were high-school sweethearts. They were basically still children when they discovered they were having me. Sadly, my mom died giving birth to me.
Like… the second I entered the world, she left it.
My dad, Jason, was 17 when I was born.
He had no savings, no worthwhile family support, and zero clue how to raise a baby!
But he never ran or handed me off. He stayed and raised me alone.
My dad never treated me like a burden. He always said I was his reason to stay grounded.
He didn’t date or outsource the hard parts.
He didn’t drink to numb anything; he just… loved me. He worked nights at a gas station so he could be with me during the day.
He also took community college classes part-time, and somehow made a world for us that felt safe even when it was falling apart behind the scenes.
He was the type of father who learned how to braid my hair from YouTube. He kept extra cash in my backpack “just in case,” and showed up to everything — even when he was exhausted!
We were close in a way that made people jealous.
I’d text him when I was having a panic attack over finals, and he’d reply with a meme and a “breathe, baby girl.”
He would send me voice memos of him singing badly in the car just to make me laugh!
My dad was the first person I called with news, bad or good.
When I’d come home from college for holidays, he’d pretend not to tear up. We also had these little rituals — like hot cocoa every first snow, “Die Hard” and “Home Alone” marathons in December, and midnight pancakes when one of us couldn’t sleep.
I thought I had more time.
He started getting tired a few months before everything happened. I noticed him rubbing his chest sometimes or breathing heavily after walking up the stairs.
I begged him to see a doctor.
He brushed it off as he always did. “I’m just getting old, kiddo,” he’d say with a smile. “I’ve earned this belly and these creaks.”
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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