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Through my eyes - He Is Not Gone

Through my eyes - He Is Not Gone

Author: by Kasia Yoko
Date: 2026-04-30

Pain is a shape shifter, it comes and it goes. It mutates from sorrow to tears. It has no timer, no schedule, no courtesy. It arrives uninvited at 3am and sits at the edge of my bed. It ambushes me in the grocery store when I reach for something he used to like. It is relentless and it is ruthless and it does not apologise for any of it.

Pain is the boogieman hiding silently in the closet waiting for a moment of weakness, to come out and drag me through emotional hell.

On the 8th of April 2026, my father, Stanislaw Koryl left this world. We nursed him through his final four months. We watched a man who was, in every sense, larger than life, grow quieter, weaker, vulnerable... And then still.

But here is what I know to be true: he is dead. He is not gone.

My father was a man of genius and grit. He did not coddle me. He did not sit with me in in my self-pity, because there was simply no room for it in his world.

He was the rock we fell on - not the cushion. And somehow, that was exactly what we needed. He redirected wayward paths with a single look, a single sentence. He pushed me, relentlessly, toward the best version of myself. Not because he doubted me. Because he never did. He just knew I was a problem child and I often strayed.

He had a way of knowing - and this is the thing that undoes me most - he always knew when I needed guidance before I knew it myself. That radar of his never failed. I am here, doing what I do, because he pointed me in the right direction when I could not see past my own fear.

He had two sayings that lived rent-free in my head. The first: "If you have a soft heart, you must have a hard arse." The second: "You become who you associate with." These were blunt lessons but that is who he was. Practical. Irrefutable. Dad's wisdom, delivered without formality.

He never had to say he loved us, and he never did, it was not his style and I did not miss it because his love was in everything he did for me. In the time he gave to me and my children. In the standard he held. In the way he showed up, fully, every single time.

And now I carry him.

Through my deep faith, I know that grief is not the end of the relationship - it is the transformation of it. He has not left the conversation. He has simply changed how he speaks. I feel him in the decisions I hesitate on. I hear him when I am about to take the easy road. He is right here, beside me, in this uncertain, beautiful, brutal world.

I choose to celebrate him every day because mourning him would be disrespectful. His wisdom is not archived. It is alive.

So here's to my father: thank you for the time you gave us to learn how to live without you. We are not there yet. But we are moving forward - because that is what you taught us to do.

No obstacle. No challenge.

Until we meet again...