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Today I woke up in a world without my father. I woke up in a world where I can never go to him for advice or watch him laugh his way through my latest novel. I woke up to a world where I will no longer be able to watch him wind up my mother or hear his booming laughter that can disrupt an entire church service. Yesterday, I woke up in another world. It was a world where I still had my dad, and it was the same world I’d woken to every day of my life except today. I didn’t think yesterday was anything special. It was just another day.I woke up, had coffee, and went out to my office in my parents’ garden to start working on my next novel.Around 9am, I needed Dad’s opinion on some things, so I went inside and played him the latest audition for my new audiobook narrator and showed him the new design for the Death, Loot & Vampires cover. He liked the narrator and the cover, and I went back out to work. A few hours later, we had lunch together, something we rarely do despite living in the same house. There was nothing wrong with him besides being a little tired.That changed in a few minutes.Within two minutes of leaving the house for my office, my father had a catastrophic stroke. It was a large deep-brain aneurysm. My mother called me in a panic, and I ran back to the house. The left side of his face was already drooping, and he was having a lot of trouble talking. My mother called the ambulance, but in the time, it took to get through, less than a minute, he began to lose control of the other side of his face too, which I knew was a terrible sign, because writers research all sorts of weird things for books. By the time my mother had finished explaining his condition, his breathing had become incredibly labored, and he was snoring while awake, which meant that his brain wasn’t able to send a strong signal to his lungs. I had to run and update his status for the ambulance.We live rurally, so it took the ambulance fifteen minutes to arrive, ten minutes to stabilize him, and twenty minutes to get him to the hospital. We called my youngest brother even before the ambulance arrived because my mother was a nurse, and we both knew how bad the situation was. He left work and jumped into his car, making the hour-long drive to the hospital. Before my brother even arrived, the doctors had scanned my dad’s brain and told us there was nothing they could do. My dad held on so my little brother could get there to say goodbye, so we could all say goodbye. He was surrounded by his three sons and loving wife when he passed away. Along with my cousin, who was like a daughter to him, and my friend, who has spent so much time in our house that he’s family. Yesterday, my dad was his usual self at 12:15, by 12:30 he was dying, and by 4PM he was dead.Yesterday as he was dying, I said nothing to my father that I haven’t told him a hundred times before. I thanked him again for being a supportive dad, who helped me follow my dreams to become a writer. I thanked him for raising me with love. I told him over and over how much I loved him the same way I did every night before he would go to sleep.I have always been open about my love for my family and friends and I’ve almost never left things unsaid. There was nothing I’ve left unsaid with my father, so when he was dying there was nothing I had to say, except I love you.In the space of a few minutes, my life completely changed. We like to tell ourselves that we have the time we need to say everything and do everything for the people we love, but sometimes that is not the case. If I had left anything unsaid with my father, I wouldn’t have had to the time to say what I needed to say to get any form of closure. So, I want you to take a moment to think about that. I want you to take a moment to pluck up the courage over feeling awkward or uncomfortable, so you call the people you love to say the things that you’ve left unsaid because you might never get the chance.Today, I woke up to a new chapter in my life, and it’s a much sadder chapter than I ever imagined.I love you, Dad.