A Journal Of My Father: Grief and the Knowledge That Maybe You Just Didn't Do Enough (7/23/2025)

 I read A Journal Of My Father recently on my plane ride to Seattle.

It's really just about this guy who didnt like his father that much returning home after his funeral. The MC had a bit of a trouble childhood growing up. His father worked long hours as a barber, and then at some point his mom cheated on his father. However, the rest of the family kept that from him, so he thought that it was just his dads fault, and so he blamed his dad.

When he became old enough, he moved out as soon as he could and didn't visit home much anymore. Before long, he became just like his father, working long hours while using work as an excuse to not go home.

But throughout the funeral, he learns more about his fathers life and the sort of man he was. He eventually gets filled with this deep sadness and regret when he realizes he was wrong about his father and that he should've gone to visit his father more often.

Reading this hit kind of of deep for me because on some level I feel similarly about my grandfather on my father's side who recently passed away. Towards the end of his life, he moved back to Taiwan, and when I visited him on vacation I didn't even see him that much. To be honest, I didn't even see him that much when he was living in the US, even though he lived with my cousin just twenty minutes away. I guess I'll just have to live with that regret now, and try to see my family more in the future whenever I can.

I don't know much about him, but I do owe a lot to him. He came to the United States while my father was still in school for work and to secure a United States citizenship in order to make it easier for my father to immigrate. He did so much for me, but I don't think I'd even have noticed or thought of it until recently. I just was not that close to him.

In the last few years of his life, I had begun to draft up a very long blog post/eulogy about him, but it's been hard to write. It felt wrong publishing it before he died, and I just can't bring myself to write now that he's passed. But eventually I think I should get that out, it's my way of honoring him in this little slice of the internet. We'll just have to see when I'm in the right mood to write it.

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