This week last year, my dad passed at the relatively young age of 76.
I’ve mentioned in past posts how grateful I was that we made our peace the past seven years.
A year after his passing, time has given me a bit of distance and perspective. Too often, in our hyper-driven culture, we rush to publish, post, promote. It’s why so much of what we see online feels so shallow and half-baked. I’ve let this one marinate.
Looking back this year, my father’s passing gave me an immense gift: release. Release from the burden of trying so hard not to be him.
Trying not to be my father is, in very large part, how I’ve lived my life. Work, family, success, kindness, romance, charity, and more have all been touched directly or indirectly with my father as the foil.
Our Last Words, Our Last Hours
The last time I saw Dad was a Friday afternoon. He died from lung cancer, but the final blow was the stroke and kidney failure he suffered from all the chemo. He couldn’t talk but he was still able to understand. He spoke mostly through his eyes and a turning of the head if he could summon the strength.
My flight home was later that evening. I’d been in Korea for two weeks and really had to get back home. My mother and sister had already left a week earlier, so I was soloing this last stretch. It was pretty hard.
That afternoon was silent. I sat by his side for about four hours.
For two weeks I said all I thought I needed to. Showed him pictures of my sister and I on vacation together, the places I took my nephews, the dinners I had with his own nephews and nieces. Held the hands of the man who used them to hit, throw, and thrash more than he did to embrace and caress. It was hard to hold his hands. I did it anyway.
As the last hour approached, I was surprised I had so much to say on behalf of my mom and sister – the women I’d grown up protecting from him my whole life. In many ways, I protected them from him by protecting them from myself, I was always scared I’d become like him.
I wasn’t emotional and didn’t trauma dump. I was measured, intentional, kind, but clear.
“I’m going to say some things on behalf of Mom and Esther, and you’re going to have to listen. It’s the only way we’ll have a shot of remembering you well. I’m sad this is the only way you can hear it. If you were able to talk, you’d just yell and curse me and never let me get a word out, so you’re just going to have to hear this.”
I said all the things.
Dad used whatever strength he had to turn away, but I saw the tears in his eyes. Turned out the little kid in me still had a few final words, too.
“You are leaving again, like you’ve done all my life. I’m only 46. You’re the second youngest of all your siblings and the first who will pass. I will take care of Mom and Esther, like I’ve done my whole life. How many times did I beg you to stop smoking, stop being so mean, just be normal? You could have had a great family!”
I wiped the tears from his eyes with my own thumbs, kissed him on the head, and said, “I love you, Dad.”
I meant it.
I stormed to the airport, made a B-line for the bar in the Korean Air lounge, and downed four gin tonics in fifteen minutes. I tried to knock myself out for the brutal 14-hour flight home.
God, I was so angry. Under anger, of course, is grief.
I knew he would pass soon. I knew my words would let him let go. He was in such incredible pain.
Of course I thought, “Maybe it would have been better had we not reconnected all these years, just for him to die.”
But no, I’m grateful.
My father was legitimately brilliant. He graduated second in his class at UC Berkeley, was fluent in several languages, a 3rd-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and was recruited by the CIA right out of school.
He also was unable to ever get out of his own way. He had an insatiable appetite for vice, never had a career, and ultimately lived and died on welfare.
Once he got old enough to stop playing the victim and blaming everyone else for his life, I saw his regret. He’d often apologize that he didn’t do more for my sister and I.
The other side of that coin is that he took pride in what I accomplished, especially my books. I’m sad he was only able to observe my life on Instagram and was never really part of it.
***
Since Dad passed, I’ve changed in radical ways. I care much less about what people think of me or my life. I tell my close friends, I’m in my “DGAF era” and I’ll probably never go back.
I’ve let go of escapism, bad habits, overperforming. What I say and how I show up is “real” instead of “official.”
I don’t white-knuckle anymore. All the work I did and things I built? Probably not possible without the fuel of “not being Dad.” That was useful then.
Now, I hold things loosely. Sort of like a player in the Olympic sport of curling that just… releases the stone down the lane. I’ve built well once. I can do so again if I ever want to, but with a different kind of fuel.
That’s the gift that losing my father gave me. I wish he was here to see it. Life can be like that, I suppose. Loss, gain. Death, life.
All I can be is grateful.
Thanks, Dad.
Mike Kim
Tuesday, June 2, 2026
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