She had drawn hundreds of faces in her life—smiling children, old couples holding hands, strangers she met in cafés, even people she had only imagined. But she had never drawn him. Not once.

Her father always laughed when she begged him to pose.
“Maybe when I retire,” he would say, ruffling her hair.
“Draw happier people for now.”

And she did.
Until the day he left for the front.

He hugged her at the doorway, wearing the same uniform she had always pretended not to fear. His hands were warm, his voice steady, but his eyes—those eyes she inherited—shook with all the things he didn’t say.

“Take care of your mother,” he whispered.
“I’ll be home soon.”

She held onto that promise like it was air—like it was the only thing keeping her alive. Every night, she sat by the window, sketchbook in her lap, waiting for headlights, for footsteps, for something… anything.

But the days passed.
Then weeks.
Then months.

And the letters stopped coming.

One cold morning, as she was washing paint from her hands, she heard her mother’s scream—a sound she had never heard before, a sound she hoped she would never hear again. When she ran to the door, she saw two men in uniform standing on the porch.

Her world collapsed in less than ten seconds.

The house became silent.
The chair he used to sit on remained empty.
The jacket he left behind still hung by the door, smelling like him.

But she couldn’t cry.
She felt frozen.
Like grief had locked itself inside her chest and thrown away the key.

Days later, she walked into her art room, sat in front of her blank canvas, and for the first time in her life, she felt scared to draw. How did you sketch someone you weren’t ready to say goodbye to? Someone whose voice you kept hearing in your dreams? Someone you still expected to walk through the door?

She picked up the pencil—her hands trembling—and began.

Every line felt like reopening a wound.
Every detail felt like losing him again.

She kept whispering to herself,
“Don’t cry… don’t cry… you have to finish this for him…”

But as she shaded the wrinkles around his eyes—the ones she used to tease him about—her vision blurred.
When she drew the shape of his mouth—the smile she had memorized since childhood—her chest tightened.
And when she finalized the uniform—the one that took him away—she couldn’t hold the pain any longer.

Tears fell faster than she could wipe them.

By the time she finished, the sun had set, casting a warm golden glow through the curtains. She stepped back and stared at the portrait. It looked like him. Too much like him. So real it hurt.

And then it happened.
She broke.

Her knees trembled.
Her breath shook.
She placed her hand over her mouth to stop herself from screaming as she collapsed into a storm of sobs.

Because in that moment, she understood something devastating:

This portrait was the last time she would ever “see” her father.

She moved closer, touching the edge of the paper as if touching him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t draw this when you were alive… I’m sorry this is the only version of you I have left.”

But then, a faint sense of warmth washed over her—like a memory, a whisper, a presence she couldn’t explain. She remembered what he always told her:
“Your art will keep people alive. Even when they can’t come home.”

Through her tears, she smiled painfully.
Because now, he would never fade.
He lived in pencil.
In paper.
In her heart.
Forever.

And as she stood there, crying beside the easel, she knew one thing:

This was not just a drawing.
It was her goodbye.
Her love.
Her last gift to the man who had given her everything.