My father kept every letter I sent from university

Dear Delyara, My father died last month, and today I opened a metal box from the top of his wardrobe. Inside were every letter I sent during university, tied together with garden string. Most were careless. Requests for money, complaints about flatmates, descriptions of parties, promises to visit that I often broke. He had written the date he received each one on the envelope. On one, beside a sentence where I said I was too busy to come home for his birthday, he had written in pencil, “She sounds happy.” That line has undone me. My father was a quiet man who never asked for much because he believed love should not create obligation. I mistook his restraint for lack of need. I called weekly in later years, helped with appointments, and sat beside him at the end. Still, those letters show a younger version of him waiting by the post for scraps of my life and being grateful for them. I brought the box home. Tonight, I read my own words and hear only the things I did not ask: Are you lonely? Do you miss me? What happens in the house after I leave?