When I Needed You the Most, Papa.

Sometimes, the heart remembers what the mind never learned to hold.

That little girl still lives inside me,

the one who searches for her father whenever life becomes too heavy to breathe.

Whenever the world feels too loud, too cruel, too lonely.

And yet, the truth is painful…

From childhood, I was never emotionally attached to him.

We lived under the same roof, but not in the same emotional space.

There were silences instead of conversations, distance instead of warmth.

I never learned how to reach for him when I needed comfort.

But life has a strange way of revealing what the heart has been hiding.

Today, when I am broken mentally, physically, financially, emotionally,

the only name my soul calls out, unconsciously, is “Papa.”

On 19th January, I went through my last PRP transplant.

As the doctors shifted me from the operation theatre to the ICU,

my consciousness was fading…

but my heart was awake.

I wasn’t calling the doctors.

I wasn’t calling my friends.

I wasn’t even calling God.

I was calling Papa.

I held my cousin brother’s hand tightly

not as a sister,

but as a daughter who needed her father.

In that moment, his hand felt like my father’s hand.

Safe. Strong. Familiar.

Later, when my cousin sent me the picture he had clicked in that moment,

my heart shattered into silent pieces.

There I was vulnerable, unconscious,

still searching for the man I once stayed away from.

“When they are here, we ignore them.

When they leave, we search for them in our prayers.”

When my father was alive,

I kept my distance.

I didn’t understand the value of his presence.

I didn’t feel the need to lean on him.

But today…

I need him the most.

Not for money.

Not for solutions.

Just for his presence.

For his voice.

For the comfort only a father can give.

“Some relationships are understood only through loss.”

They say,

“You only realize someone’s importance when they are gone.”

And now I understand how painfully true that is.

Because even though I was never emotionally close to him,

my soul still knows where to run when it is tired.

It runs to Papa.

Maybe love doesn’t always show itself loudly.

Maybe some bonds stay quiet, hidden, unfinished.

But when life breaks you,

those unfinished bonds come back to hold you.

And today,

I hold onto his memory

the way I once held my cousin’s hand in the ICU as if I were holding my father’s.

“Not all love is expressed.

Some love is only felt in the deepest pain.”