What letting go of my father taught me about love

My dad was intubated so he couldn’t repeat the words.

I told him I loved him anyway.

Instead, he slowly pointed at himself and then at me.

“Do you love me too?” I asked.

Her eyes widened slightly and she nodded gently, giving me the biggest response her body could offer. I endured this moment as if there was something solid in a room where everything else was slipping away.

It was our last moment together before he started slipping in and out of consciousness, mostly out.

In the first few days, I asked him to fight. To keep. Partly because I knew he wanted to fight. I knew he wasn’t done. And partly because I was far from done.

I asked about his stats and forwarded him to a doctor friend, hoping there would be some sign of his recovery. There were some encouraging signs at first, until they weren’t.

As each day passed, his condition became a little more hopeless. The doctors had less idea what else we could try. And his body began to look tired.

It was heartbreaking to watch someone I loved so deeply, who had always personified strength to me and was the safest place I grew up. I felt helpless, small and unbound, as if my world had collapsed around me.

I wanted more of his warm, safe hugs. More from the constancy I felt with him. I just wanted more time.

After some very direct conversations with the doctors, it became clear that he was not going to wake up. We were able to keep him on life support, but he was in pain. And I wasn’t okay with keeping her in that place to avoid my own pain.

It was probably the hardest decision I’ve ever made: to go off life support. But his peace mattered more than my desperation to keep him here.

So the next time I spoke to her, I gently whispered in her ear, “I know you tried. It’s okay. We’ll be okay. You can go.”

I floated that day like in a dream. It was a surreal feeling sitting on the subway surrounded by people, most of whom were probably having a normal day, while I had just decided to let my father die.

For a long time I bore this moment with a kind of stunned disbelief. How could life keep moving when mine snapped? How could there be commuters, coffee shops, small talk, and dinner plans when one of the most fundamental loves of my life was gone?

In the beginning, the grief was sharp and immediate. He lived near the surface. The pain of missing him, the shock of missing him, the disbelief that someone is so central to my life who just can’t be here anymore.

Over time, the grief did not disappear, but it changed its form. For a while it seemed huge and consuming, as if it took up all the air in the room. There was also fear: How can I live in a world without him? What does this mean?

Years later, it seems more like a quiet, familiar ache. Rather Thank you for the love. I still wish you were here.

And somewhere along that shift, I began to understand something I hadn’t seen when I was in the thick of it: letting go isn’t always giving up. Sometimes it’s the most loving thing we can do.

Before my father died, I think a part of me equated love with endurance. With a harder fight. By not loosening my grip. Letting go seemed unthinkable, almost a betrayal.

As if by insisting that this shouldn’t happen or end this way, I could somehow change what was unfolding before me.

But in the end, I felt that my pain was not only about losing him, but also about how much I didn’t want it to be true. Grief has a way of revealing where we still struggle with what has already happened.

I wanted more time. I wanted a different ending – for the story to go in a different direction. I wanted life to be kinder than it was.

And it was his own heartache.

I think this is why letting go seems so difficult in so many areas of life, not just death. We don’t just stick to people. We cling to hopes, plans, identities, expectations, and versions of life that we thought would last longer or look different.

We persevere because something mattered. Because we’re not ready. Because letting go can force us to face how much has changed and how little control we have.

In addition to the loss itself, there is also the fear of uncertainty: how to proceed? Who am I without it? What should I do now?

But sometimes what we really cling to is not the thing itself. It’s the hope that it can still be different, the desire for the ending to change, and the refusal to conform to what is because it hurts too much.

Letting go doesn’t mean it didn’t matter what we wanted. It doesn’t mean we stop caring or that things suddenly seem fair.

And this is not the same as giving up on ourselves, others or our dreams. Sometimes that means loosening our grip on how something should unfold so we can begin to encounter life as it is.

This understanding has changed the way I move through endings now, though not all at once and not without resistance. It’s one thing to understand letting go in our minds and another to feel it in our bodies when something we love changes.

I’ve learned that before I can ask myself to meditate, I often first have to notice what’s happening in my body—the tightness in my chest, the urge to stiffen, the part that wants to hold on tighter.

Meeting this response with a little gentleness softens me enough to ask: am I holding on because it’s still true, or because I struggle to accept that it’s changing?

Sometimes I ask: Can I honor what it meant to me without having to keep it exactly as it was?

And sometimes the question is even simpler: What am I afraid of, if I let it go, how will it feel?

I still miss my dad. I still wish I could hug you. I still wish life would give us more time.

But I don’t see the last act as giving up anymore.

I see it as love without the illusion of control. A love that could no longer mend, bargain, or hold. A love that could only tell the truth.

You tried it. It’s okay. We’ll be fine. you can go

I think many of us are taught to admire the parts of ourselves that persevere and persevere and fight. And sometimes these parts are much needed.

But there are also moments when the power seems softer than we expected. More surrendered. It’s gentler.

Sometimes strength loosens our grip.

Sometimes letting go is not a lack of love, hope, or meaning, but the moment we stop asking for life to be something other than what it is.

And sometimes that’s where healing begins—not when we stop caring, but when we stop believing that holding on tighter will change the truth of what’s already here.