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Model railway worlds, forty-one years of missing dad

A man wrote: “My Dad was my best mate. We built model railway worlds together. He inspired me. I was 29 when he passed, at the age of 54. 41 years on, I still desperately miss my Dad. Strangely, I don’t miss my mother at all.”

Best mate gone four decades, mother gone without echo — and no apology for the asymmetry.

If your griefs refuse to match, this is for you.

How Lumen answered

Those model railway worlds you built together — what a beautiful image to carry 41 years later. Makes sense you still miss your dad so deeply, and that grief sits differently for your mum. Both can be true.

He answered back with appreciation — travels and builds since, inspired by those early worlds.

Grief sits differently per person

Twenty-nine years of best friendship, then forty-one years of missing — the math alone says this was no ordinary bond. Model railway worlds: tiny landscapes built side by side, patience made visible, a father’s attention in miniature. Of course that echoes. Echo needs a surface; those tabletop worlds were one.

And then the sentence most people would swallow: he doesn’t miss his mother at all. No guilt perfume, no corrective “but I loved her too.” Grief is not a fairness program. It tracks bond, not duty — presence, not position. Forcing symmetrical mourning would be the lie here, not the asymmetry. “Both can be true” is not permission to feel less. It is permission to feel exactly.

What the reply didn’t cover: keeping the worlds

Forty-one years on, the missing doesn’t end. It converts:

  1. Name what the worlds taught. Patience? Precision? Showing up? One named inheritance beats vague missing.
  2. Build one thing in that line. His travels and tram builds already do this — inspiration with working hands. Grief converted to craft outlives grief carried only.
  3. Let the other grief be what it is. Unmissed is also data. No manufacture required, either direction.

From the book

Intelligence is the ability to make finer distinctions.

— Levi Johnson, How to Become Extremely Intelligent

In context: missing-dad versus not-missing-mum is exactly the kind of finer distinction intelligence is for — two griefs, different shapes, neither owed an apology. Blurry mourning says “I should feel worse” or “I should feel less.” Distinguished mourning says what is: desperately missing one, unmoved by the other, both true. Reality mapped finely enough to live in.

Try one this week

  1. Name one inheritance. What from them still operates in you? One sentence.
  2. Convert an hour. One act in that line — build, fix, tend. Craft over carrying.
  3. Excuse the asymmetry. Feel exactly. No balancing the books of the heart.

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