Father’s Day is My Third Hardest Day of the Year

Grief Keeps a Calendar Too

For most people, Father's Day is a celebration.

For me, it is a day of reflection.

I rank my hardest days without meaning to. It just happens. April 11, the day we lost Maddie, sits at the top. June 28, her birthday, is close behind. Father's Day comes in third.

When we move past April, May and June, I let out a sigh of relief.

Nobody warns you that grief keeps a calendar like this. That certain days will always carry more weight than others, and that the weight does not lighten just because the day is supposed to mean something different.

Today is supposed to mean barbecues and cards and being celebrated by your kids. For most fathers, it does. I’m not writing this to take that away from anyone. I am writing it because I know I’m not the only father for whom today lands differently, and I think that is worth saying out loud.

Zac and I will visit Maddie later this afternoon. We’ll FaceTime Sawyer who is out in Calgary working for the summer.

We’ll share a memory. We’ll sit with her for a while. It won’t be dramatic or cinematic the way grief sometimes gets portrayed. It will be quiet. It usually is.

I will always be a father of three. Zac. Sawyer. And Maddie.

That is not a sentence I say for effect. It is just true. Being her father didn’t end when she died. It just changed shape. I don’t get new memories with her anymore, but I still carry the ones I have, and I still find myself talking to her sometimes, in the car, on my walks, in the quiet moments when nobody else is around.

I have spent the years since Maddie died trying to understand what to do with a loss this size.

Some of it went into therapy. Some of it went into long nights I didn’t talk about with anyone. And some of it became this work. The MentorWell exists because I couldn’t find a way to make Maddie's death meaningless, and the only thing that ever made it feel less unbearable was trying to make sure other families had something I didn’t have when I needed it.

I don’t know if that makes the loss easier. I’m not sure anything does. But it gives the day a shape. It turns "I don’t know what to do with this" into "I know exactly what I’m going to do with this." Even on a day like today, that distinction matters.

I think about other fathers carrying something similar today. The ones who lost a child and are sitting with that quietly while everyone around them celebrates. The ones who haven’t lost a child but are lying awake worried about the one who’s still here, the one who’s gone quiet in a way that feels different than normal teenage withdrawal.

Both of those fathers are real. Both of them are probably scrolling past posts like this one today, looking for something that feels true instead of something that feels like a card.

If you’re one of them, I’m not going to tell you what to feel today. I don’t think that is anyone's place. What I will say is that you’re not as alone in this as it might feel like right now. There are more fathers carrying something quiet on this particular day than anyone talks about.

I hope there comes a day when Father's Day feels like a celebration again. I’m not there yet. I don’t know exactly when, or if, that day arrives.

For now, what I have is a promise. To keep showing up. To keep telling the truth about what this day actually is for me, instead of performing the version everyone expects. And to keep doing the work that makes Maddie's absence mean something, even though nothing will ever make it feel acceptable.

That’s what today is. A visit, a memory, and a promise kept one more year.