They say time heals, but grief doesn’t own a clock; it doesn’t tick politely or wind itself down like the watches in shop windows. It lingers like weather—shifting, returning, impossible to predict. Thirteen years after my father died, his absence still sat with me everywhere, an invisible companion who turned up in ordinary moments. I’d hear him in the whistle of the kettle on a quiet morning, in the scratch of a familiar record echoing from a grocery store speaker, in the way my fingers twitched toward my phone whenever life pressed too hard and I longed to call him. He wasn’t just my dad. He was the one constant who stayed when everyone else vanished. My mother had walked out the day I was born, leaving nothing but her name on a birth certificate. My father stayed for every day after, through scraped knees and late-night fevers, through exams and heartbreaks, a steady lighthouse in the dark.
After the funeral, I’d closed and locked the door of our old house, turning the key as if sealing away a storm. I told myself it was temporary. But months became years. I never went back. The silence inside that house had teeth—it felt like a predator crouched in the hallway, waiting to swallow me whole. Even the thought of opening the door made my chest tighten. I kept telling myself I’d return one day, maybe to look for old documents or keepsakes, but that was a lie I whispered to survive. The truth was simpler: I was afraid. Afraid that stepping inside would collapse all the walls I’d built around my grief.
Then, one September morning, something shifted. Maybe it was age creeping in, or maybe I was tired of carrying sorrow like contraband hidden under my coat. Without planning, I found myself driving out to the old neighborhood. The streets felt smaller, like a photograph curling at the edges. I parked under the oak tree my dad had planted the day I was born. That tree, once a sapling I could circle with both arms, now stood taller than the roofline, its roots cracking the sidewalk. I sat staring at the front steps, remembering how he used to lift me high enough to brush my fingers across the leaves. “Strong roots, kiddo,” he’d say, his voice warm as bread. “Reach for the sky, but hold your ground.” The memory tasted like sunlight and sawdust.
I stood at the door with the old copper key trembling in my hand. “You can do this,” I whispered, though even as I said it, the words felt like a lie. I turned the key. The lock gave a reluctant click, the hinges groaning like they were waking from a long sleep. For a heartbeat I thought I heard him—his familiar voice, teasing and steady: “Welcome home, kiddo.” The sound jolted through me, and I almost said “Dad?” before realizing it was only the wind pushing through the broken glass in the hallway.
I’d told myself I was coming for one thing—some old financial papers I needed for work. No wandering. No nostalgia. No ghosts. But grief doesn’t care about your plans; it kicks them aside like dry leaves.
The house smelled exactly the same: wood polish clinging to the walls, dust heavy in the air, and underneath it all a faint sweetness like the coffee he used to brew on slow Sunday mornings. I found the file drawer easily—my body still knew the way—but before I realized it, my feet had carried me toward the attic hatch. It was muscle memory. That’s where we’d stored Christmas decorations, his old jackets, and boxes of my childhood he could never throw away. I stood under the hatch for a long time, my heart beating like a fist on a door. Then I reached up and pulled it open.
The ladder creaked as I climbed, each step like a reprimand for staying away so long. Dust rose in swirling clouds, turning sunlight into fog. My throat tightened. Everything was still there: the crooked row of school trophies, his flannel shirts folded with military precision, a tin of mints whose brand had been discontinued years ago. I picked up one of the flannels and pressed it to my face. It still smelled of his aftershave—cedar and soap, a scent that could crack me open like glass. “You promised you’d see me graduate,” I whispered, and in my head I heard his gentle answer, the one he always gave when he couldn’t keep a promise: “I’m sorry, pumpkin. I would’ve moved heaven to get there.”
Then my eyes caught on something—a worn leather bag tucked behind a stack of old paperbacks. My chest clenched. That bag had been our weekend ritual, our unspoken contract. Inside it lived our video-game console, two controllers, and the endless competitions that defined our Saturdays. It wasn’t just electronics; it was a whole chapter of our life zipped into leather.
My hands trembled as I unzipped it. On top of the console lay a folded piece of paper with my name written in his familiar looping handwriting.
We’ll play together after you pass the entrance exams, pumpkin. I’m proud of you.
The attic blurred. My throat closed like a fist. “You didn’t get to see it,” I choked out. “I passed, Dad. You were right about me.”
I carried the console downstairs as if it were something fragile and sacred. I set it up the way we used to, hands moving automatically through the old steps—wires, cartridge, controller. The TV flickered to life, humming, and there it was—the old racing game that had once ruled our living room. The startup jingle hit like a punch to the ribs. And then I saw it: his ghost car, sitting on the start line. The game saved your fastest lap as a transparent version of your car, replaying it forever, a ghost looping endlessly.
“You left me a race,” I whispered.
I remembered the last time we’d played before the hospital. I’d been so close to beating him. “Promise me you’ll keep racing,” he’d said, half-joking, half-serious, a flicker of something in his eyes I didn’t understand then. I understood it now.
I picked up the controller. My hands shook as the countdown began. Three, two, one—go.
His ghost car shot forward, smooth and perfect, every turn memorized like muscle memory. He’d always been unbeatable, graceful even in pixels. “Push, kiddo,” I could almost hear him say. “You’re holding back.”
“I’m trying,” I muttered, my voice breaking. It was absurd—crying over polygons on a screen—but grief doesn’t care about logic. Lap after lap, I got closer. I could feel his rhythm, the way he cut corners, the way he braked just enough. For the first time in years, I felt like I was with him again, like the space between us had narrowed to a racetrack.
After an hour, sweat on my palms, I finally edged past his ghost. The finish line flashed ahead. My thumb hovered over the accelerator. One more second and I’d win. One more second and his ghost would vanish from the leaderboard—replaced by mine.
“If I let you win, do you stay?” I asked the screen softly.
No answer. Just the hum of an old TV and a digital sky frozen in eternal noon.
“I miss you every day,” I whispered. “Sometimes I still call your number, just to hear your voice on the voicemail.”
My thumb lifted. I let him cross first.
His ghost drifted across the finish line, and I laughed through tears that felt cleaner than any I’d cried in years. It hurt, but it was the kind of hurt that made space for air again, a pain that opened instead of closed.
I packed up the console and brought it home. Now, on nights when work at the hospital leaves me hollow, I plug it in and race. Sometimes I talk to him. I tell him about my patients—the stubborn old man whose humor reminds me of him, the teenage girl who made it through chemo and smiled like she’d won a war.
“You’d tell me to keep my chin up,” I say to the screen. “You’d tell me I’m doing good.” His car always pulls ahead in the first lap, just like he used to. I never try to beat him now. It’s enough to chase him.
One night, after a long shift, I finished a race and stood by the window, city lights flickering below like a shaken snow globe. “If you can see me, Dad,” I said, “I’m okay. Not perfect. But okay.”
The console hummed, a soft electric heartbeat in the dark. I rested my hand on its warm plastic. “Every time I race you,” I whispered, “I get a piece of you back.”
When I finally went to bed, I left the console on, the ghost car looping endlessly around the track. Just before sleep took me, I thought I heard it again—that warm, laughing voice.
“Same time next weekend, pumpkin?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I murmured into the dark.
Because love doesn’t die. It changes shape. Sometimes it’s a laugh you still hear in the hum of an old machine, or a hand you still feel in the empty space beside you. Sometimes it’s a ghost car that keeps circling the track, pulling you forward, reminding you that the race isn’t over yet.
And I’ll keep driving—lap after lap—until the day I finally catch him.