I read somewhere that if someone lived on a planet fifty million light-years away, and looked at Earth through a powerful enough telescope, they wouldn't see us.
They wouldn't see cities, or airplanes, or the glow of phone screens in dark bedrooms.

They would see dinosaurs. 
After all, light takes time to travel. Every time we look into space, we are looking into the past.
The universe is so vast that even now, somewhere, the light from an ordinary afternoon on Earth is still making its way across the dark.

I think about that often.
Somewhere in the universe, there is a distance so great that my father's light has not arrived there yet.

I think about a random Tuesday.
My father is sitting near a window. A cup of tea, cooling beside him.
Sunlight caught in the strands of his hair.
He is asking whether I've eaten. Maybe he is pretending not to worry.
Maybe he is laughing at something that wasn't even very funny.

The light from that moment lifted quietly from the room and began travelling.
Past the moon.
Past the planets.
Past names I cannot pronounce.
Still travelling.
Even now.

And if there is a world far enough away, someone looking toward Earth today would see that afternoon.
It won’t be as a memory or as longing. But simply as the present.
My father, alive, inside a moment I thought I had lost.
Completely unaware that I would miss him this much.

What a strange thing grief can be!
Here, it teaches me how to live without him. 
And somewhere beyond the reach of counting, the universe is still watching him finish his tea.