10.23.2025 — Knowing Love, Knowing Grief

Flannel Diaries
12 minutes ago
3 min read

"Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop." — Rumi

Life is an endless dance between holding on to what matters and releasing what no longer serves. It takes courage to do both, to endure through hardship and to let go when your heart feels heavy.

Fall is a very melancholic time of the year for me. Two close friends moved on into the void around this time, and my dad’s death anniversary always brings me back to that space between love and forgiveness. He was a complicated man, stoic, stubborn, brilliant, difficult, and extremely flawed. He never said “I love you,” not once that I can remember, not even when he was dying. But he did say he was proud of me, and maybe that was his version of it.

He named me after himself and made sure we shared the same initials. It’s strange, like he wanted me to carry him forward, to be a reflection of him. To carry on his legacy. And maybe, in some weird way, I am and I’m not. He was hardworking, driven, and a little narcissistic, the kind of man who believed the world bent to willpower. And maybe that’s the part of him that lives loudest in me: that relentless belief that I can make things work, that I can rebuild even after ruin. It’s both my gift and my burden, a mirror of the man who made me. Both a blessing and a curse.

He showed love the way men of his generation often did, through work, provision, and persistence. He taught me devotion to family, the immigrant determination to make the best out of difficult situations, and the unshakable belief that you can rebuild from anything. He also taught me what silence costs, what happens when love gets buried under duty and pride until it turns into something unrecognizable, and even toxic.

At the end, he wanted to know if he was a good man, a good father. And I told him he was, even when he wasn’t. Because love isn’t easy, and people aren’t either. He made me both hate myself and believe I could do anything I set my mind to. That contradiction lives in me still, the rebel and the conformist, the dreamer and the realist, the lover and the villain.

Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to quiet kinds of love, the ones that show up instead of the type that speaks up. The ones that hide feeling behind function. But I’ve also learned how that kind of love, when pushed down and hidden, can twist itself into strange, self-protective shapes. Love unspoken becomes love undefined. Love unwritten.

Fall has a way of reminding me that letting go can still be beautiful. That even the most complicated endings can hold grace. That we’re all just trying to be good, good people, good parents, good partners, good children, even when we fall short. Especially when we come up short.

My dad taught me that. He wasn’t always right, but he kept showing up. He kept making it work. And maybe that’s all any of us can do: to keep trying, keep forgiving, keep growing, to let go of what’s no longer good, and believe that even after the hardest seasons, we can still be good again.

My friend Kimi thinks it’s weird that I still grieve my father. But I loved him. As messed up as he was, and as complicated as our relationship was, he was still my father. In his quiet, convoluted way, I knew he loved me too.

No one gets to tell you how to grieve. No one gets to decide for you how long is long enough. And no one but yourself gets to know your grief.

Grief changes over time, but in the end, it is still grief. What I’ve learned from knowing grief and knowing love is that you get one life, one weird, unpredictable, beautiful, magical life. Don’t waste it. Don’t waste it thinking you aren’t good enough, or that you aren’t deserving of wonderful things. This world is stupid and sucks a lot, and so what if it does? This is it. This is what we have to work with.

So, in the words of teacher, mentor, and fashion guru, Tim Gunn: “Make it work.” 👔✨