When My Father Died…

*My journal entry from last year—posted on February 2nd, 2026 to honor the 1-year anniversary of my father, Darshan Singh Jourha’s passing.

When people die, they tell you it’s okay because the love you have for them will always be there. But what about his love? Who will love me as I am now? His love for me died with him. His love for me is gone forever. It died with him.

The reality of my pain is that it will never go away. It is infinite.

My dad was a complicated man, infected by his own compounded grief. The loss of his mother, sister, nephew, and then brother, loss stacked on loss, shaped him in ways both positive and negative. But what I respected about him greatly was his ability to keep moving. He kept going. He kept enduring. He never complained. And he never gave up.

His death is traumatic for me. It’s like an open wound is perpetually gashed into my heart. It is deep and horrid and painful. It is constantly gasping in pain inside of me. It will never heal.

When the reality of the pain hits, it feels like the bolts of my bones start crippling and tearing down, grinding through on their last legs. Images of him pop up without warning. Scenes replay in my mind constantly. I can’t help that I’m melodramatic—my father is dead. It is hard to live without him.

But now, I am starting to feel that instead of living in this pain, I can move with it. I have looked my pain directly in the eyes. I have looked into its soul. I have faced it head-on. I know what awful, gut-wrenching, and horrendous thing must be done… I must learn to begin moving on.

Honor my dad.
Live up to my reputation of being “just like your father.”

Life keeps moving. The Earth keeps spinning. I am devoutly proud of my father. He was a great man.

I can’t believe I had to let him go. I can’t believe I have to learn how to continue living without him. I can no longer run on fumes. I must know how to refill my own tank—to move with the pain, to dance alongside it when my gaping wound begins leaking into other aspects of my life, threatening to prevent love from entering at all.

This pain prevents me from experiencing love & joy—

Rather than living in fear of it, I will embrace it. It will be there while I graduate with my master’s. While I build my community. While job searching. It will be there when I put my dog down. While I fall in love and out of love. While I get heartbroken, get married, have children, present my work around the world, create art that impacts people substantially, and bear my soul.

No matter what, I will feel it. The pain.

But rather than becoming a victim of my misery, I will be just like my father and rise above it. I will not let the setback of watching my father tragically die impact my destiny.

My innate desire for greatness and success cannot fall through the cracks of melancholy. I must keep moving. I must keep fighting. Because despite it all, I know I can live a good life. I know I can accomplish amazing things.

I know that no matter what gets thrown my way—no matter how many people I lose, how many bones I break—I will crawl to the finish lines of success even if it’s the last thing I do

I will not let my suffering simply be suffering anymore. Enough wallowing. I have greatness to achieve. I have a beautiful life to experience. I have potential to live up to.

My father may have died.
My father did die.

But his love for me lives on through the will, hard work, and determination I bring into my life in his honor. He believed in me. He knew I could do it. And I can’t let him die wrong about me.

I know I am my father’s daughter. Like him, I was dealt a shitty hand in life. And just like him, I will persevere and accomplish.