Thirteen years after my father died, I finally returned to his house\u2014a place frozen in time and heavy with memories. I told myself I was only there for old documents, but stepping inside felt like reopening a wound I\u2019d avoided for over a decade. Every creak, every shadow, every familiar scent felt like my father was still lingering in the walls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the attic, buried among dusty boxes and old clothes, I found his worn leather game bag. Inside was a note in his handwriting: \u201cWe will play together after you pass the entrance exams, pumpkin! I\u2019m really proud of you!\u201d<\/em> My heart broke\u2014he never got to see me pass. Under the note was our old game console, still holding the last race he ever played.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I turned it on, his \u201cghost car\u201d\u2014the game\u2019s saved record of his fastest lap\u2014appeared on the screen. It felt like he had left me one last race, one last moment to spend together. I played for hours, trying to catch him. When I finally could\u2019ve beaten his record, I let him cross the finish line first. It hurt, but it felt right\u2014like keeping a piece of him alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now I take the console home and play whenever the world feels heavy. I talk to him, race him, remember him. I\u2019m not ready to let him go, and maybe I never will. But each race gives me a bit of him back. Maybe one day I\u2019ll beat his ghost car\u2014but not today. Today, I just want to race with my dad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thirteen years after my father died, I finally returned to his house\u2014a place frozen in time and heavy with memories. I told myself I was only there… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":281,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19570"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19572,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19570\/revisions\/19572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}