I should have sensed something was off long before that night.
Little things had been happening all week—things too small to question out loud, but too strange to forget. My son’s toys, which I distinctly remembered stuffing into the bin, kept reappearing in perfect rows across the carpet.
A trace of aftershave drifted down the hallway one evening, the old barbershop-scented kind my father used to wear—the scent I hadn’t smelled since the day we packed away his belongings. I chalked it up to fatigue, to memory, to coincidence. But deep down, part of me wondered if these were whispers of something I wasn’t ready to acknowledge.
Then came the night everything shifted.
A soft sound—like someone humming a lullaby—pulled me from sleep. I slipped out of bed and went to check on my son. There he sat, upright and completely calm, murmuring into the dark as though holding a quiet conversation. A chill climbed my spine, but my son didn’t seem afraid. His face was relaxed, eyes half-closed, as though comforted by whoever—or whatever—he believed was with him.
When he finally noticed me, he lifted a sleepy hand and pointed toward the rocking chair in the corner.
“Mommy,” he whispered, “the big man sits there. He sings.”
The chair was empty, but it still swayed—slowly, rhythmically—as if someone had just stood up and stepped away. I couldn’t speak. I simply tucked him back under his blanket and stayed with him until morning light made the room feel ordinary again.
At breakfast, when his dreams had softened and the world felt less strange, I gently asked about the “big man.”
My son described him with disarming clarity: kind, old, and wearing “a tall hat like the ones in Grandpa’s old pictures.”
My heart stuttered. He had never seen those photographs, the ones packed in a box in the back of my closet. My father had passed before my son was born—before he even knew I was expecting.
Later that day, I retrieved the dusty album and placed it on the floor between us. I didn’t guide him or flip to any particular page. I simply let him turn each one in his own time.
Midway through, he stopped. His small finger pressed against a photo—one taken long before I was even born. My father stood smiling in it, wearing the same hat my son had described.
“That’s him,” my son said softly. “That’s the man who comes to see me.”
✔️ Conclusion
I felt my breath catch as I stared at the image—at the face my son had never known, yet somehow recognized. Whether it was imagination, coincidence, or something far beyond anything I can explain, a gentle warmth settled over me in that moment. Maybe love doesn’t vanish when a life ends. Maybe it lingers, searching for the people it never had the chance to hold.