I finished the history book my father kept asking when I would complete

Dear Delyara, I spent ten years researching the history of our neighbourhood: old factories, immigration, strikes, shops, families, photographs people kept in biscuit tins. My father asked about the book constantly. “Finished yet?” became his greeting. He died two years before I completed it. Today, the first printed copy arrived. I put it on his old chair before opening it. There is a photograph of Dad on page 214 outside the factory where he worked at nineteen. He would have complained that I chose one where his hair looked ridiculous. The book exists because hundreds of people trusted me with stories, not because grief finished it for me. Still, reaching the end without Dad felt strange. Goals reached after loss are not always triumphant. Sometimes you hold the finished thing and immediately look toward the person who spent years annoying you into continuing.