The Moments I Keep Replaying

It’s the middle of the night again.

The house is quiet. Everyone is asleep. And as soon as my head hits the pillow, my thoughts turn to Alex.

At first it’s the familiar ache — how much I love him, how much I miss him, how I wish he were here. Then I find myself talking to him in the dark. Apologizing. Telling him I know he’s still here, just in a different way. Asking him to visit me in a dream again — but like the good one. The one where he appeared out of nowhere and it felt like a reunion. Like love.

Not like the terrible one.

And then my mind drifts.

I try to redirect it — to anything else. I think about building Jason a new desk since he’s outgrown the one we made. I think about projects, plans, something practical. But somehow my thoughts always circle back.

They land on moments.

Small ones. Ordinary ones.

The night he was heating up dinner. I asked if we could talk for a minute. He stopped right then. I asked how he was doing with money — savings from his fall job. He told me it was gone. I reminded him about car inspection and registration coming up. Responsibilities.

And then he said, “I’m trying. I really am. I’ve been applying for jobs.”

I could hear the stress in his voice.

I wasn’t trying to be hard on him. I had the same conversation with Jason. I was just trying to help them think ahead, to grow into adulthood. Of course I would have helped him. Of course I would have made sure his car was safe and registered.

But I keep replaying that moment.

I should have let him eat first.
I should have sat down after dinner.
I should have told him clearly, plainly:
“You’re not alone. I’ll always be here for you.”

I know what it’s like to sit deep in the weeds with him — to really connect, to understand, to talk through the hard things. I’ve done that. Many times.

But these moments that come back at night?
Those aren’t the best versions of me.

They’re the ordinary ones. The ones where I didn’t go deeper. The ones where I assumed there would be more time.

And that’s what haunts me.

Because I am his father.

My job — my responsibility — was to protect him. To teach him. To keep him safe. To make sure he always knew he had a place to land.

And at the end of the day, he’s not here.

That feels like failure.

Failure is a lack of success. And I didn’t succeed in keeping him safe.

There were times he didn’t want to be home. Times he felt like Jason was the favorite. I understood that — I’m the firstborn too. I remember feeling like my younger sister got away with more than I ever would. So when Alex said he felt that way, I told him, “I know exactly how that feels.”

I meant it. I saw him in that.

But now my mind twists it.

If I understood him that well… why didn’t I do more?
Why didn’t I go deeper every time?
Why didn’t I make sure he heard the words?

Grief has a way of turning ordinary parenting moments into verdicts.

It takes a dinner conversation and makes it the defining one.
It takes a reminder about responsibility and turns it into evidence.
It isolates a single scene and asks, “What if that was the moment?”

But the truth is, parenting isn’t made up of perfect moments. It’s made up of thousands of imperfect ones. Conversations in passing. Check-ins. Corrections. Laughter. Frustration. Repair. Growth.

I didn’t love Jason more than Alex. Not for a second. They are different people, wired differently, walking different paths. But sibling comparison is real. Firstborn pressure is real. And maybe I couldn’t always ease that for him the way I wish I could have.

What keeps me up isn’t that I didn’t love him.

It’s that I wish I had said it more plainly.

I wish I had assumed less time.
I wish I had paused longer.
I wish I had sat beside him after dinner and told him, clearly, “You are not alone.”

But love isn’t measured by one sentence spoken on one night.

It’s measured by patterns. By showing up. By caring enough to ask about money. By worrying about inspections and safety. By remembering the stress in his voice years later.

I am replaying humanity under the weight of permanent loss.

And maybe that’s what grief does. It takes the normal imperfections of a relationship and magnifies them until they feel like causes instead of moments.

I don’t know if I’ll ever fully silence the voice that says I should have done more.

But I do know this:

I loved him.
I tried.
I showed up in the ways I knew how.
And if I could go back, I would say it again and again —

“You were never alone. I was always here.”

Maybe writing this is my way of saying it now.

Maybe tonight that will be enough to let me rest.