Girls at school compared designer dresses and shared photos of outfits that cost more than my dad earned in a month. I barely listened.
Prom was supposed to be our moment.
Dad would’ve taken a hundred pictures of me before I left the house.
Without him, the whole thing felt empty.
One evening I opened the small box the hospital had sent home with his belongings. Inside were his wallet, his watch with the cracked glass… and at the bottom, neatly folded like everything he owned, were his work shirts.
Blue ones.
Gray ones.
And a faded green one I remembered from years ago.
I held one of the shirts for a long time.
Then suddenly an idea came to me.
If Dad couldn’t come to prom… maybe I could bring him with me.
“I barely know how to sew,” I told my aunt.
“I’ll teach you,” she said.
That weekend we spread Dad’s shirts across the kitchen table. Her sewing kit sat between us, and slowly we started working.
It took days.
I made mistakes. I had to undo entire seams and start again. Sometimes I cried quietly while stitching late at night. Other times I talked to Dad out loud while I worked.
My aunt never said a word about that.
Each shirt carried a memory.