The Man Who Never Said It

"Read them to me," my mother said, placing a box of greeting cards on the table between us. "I can't see anymore."

Every card was from my father.

I had travelled to Saskatoon the week before Father's Day 2026 to spend time with my mother in her assisted-living apartment. At ninety, macular degeneration has stolen much of her sight and leaves her disoriented at times.

I picked up the first card and began to read.

Before long I found myself asking, "Tell me about Dad."

***

Ethel fell hopelessly in love with Zyg when she was in Grade 10. He lived on a neighbouring Saskatchewan farm and was twenty-four.

Her father was alarmed.

"Those Yuzaks drink, swear, and party too much," he warned. "He's not good for you. Finish high school. Get an education."

But warnings rarely stop young love.

My grandfather sent Ethel to Vancouver to live with relatives and work in their corner store, hoping distance would cool the romance.

Instead, it intensified.

"We wrote eachother every day," my mother said.

"Every day?"

"Every single day."

Three hundred and sixty-five letters.

Those who have read my memoir Never Still already know something of Zyg.

He was a man of the 1950s: practical, stoic, hardworking, deeply faithful to family and God. Loving in his own way, but never emotionally expressive.

So how do I reconcile that man with 365 love letters?

***

Well...

Ethel ate chocolate bars while writing those letters and gained thirty pounds.

When she stepped off the train back in Saskatchewan, Zyg didn't recognize her.

***

The weight came off. They married.

I arrived a year later. Four daughters followed before Ethel turned thirty and Zyg thirty-six.

To hear my mother tell it, Zyg was a Renaissance man.

He taught Grades 1 through 12 in a one-room schoolhouse. Art, music, mathematics, social studies, sports—he taught everything. He curled in winter, called square dances, pitched fastball, sang loudly, laughed easily, and seemed to know everyone in the district.

When the twins were still in diapers and Ethel was hanging laundry outside through Saskatchewan winters, he bought a brand-new burgundy Chevrolet.

He loved life.

I still remember his grin, his head thrown back in laughter, and the way he loved to dance.

***

After their youngest child was born, my parents drove to the Little Red River north of Prince Albert.

They built a bonfire.

They had brought two boxes.

The letters.

Every letter from that year apart.

Sitting beside the fire, they read them aloud.

They laughed at youthful promises and extravagant declarations. They cried over words written by two young people who had no idea what life would ask of them.

Then they fed every letter to the flames.

The paper curled and blackened.

Their words drifted into the night.

Afterward, they roasted wieners over the coals.

***

The greeting cards remained.

Now they sat between my mother and me.

It took nearly a week to read them all.

Birthday cards.

Anniversary cards.

Valentine's cards.

Decades of them.

Again and again, beneath the printed verses and Hallmark poetry, my father had written the same message in his own hand:

I love you so much. I'm sorry I can't express it adequately.

The same confession.

The same apology.

The same longing.

Over and over.

***

For years I told myself a simple story about my father.

He loved me.

He worked hard, provided for us, laughed with us, danced with us, and showed up.

But he never once said, "I love you."

The 365 letters reveal a young man who could pour out his heart to the woman he loved.

The greeting cards reveal something else.

Even decades later, he was still trying.

Still reaching.

Still apologizing for not being able to say what he felt.

I had mistaken silence for absence.

It wasn't.

It was struggle.

Some people are fluent in love.

Others spend a lifetime translating it.

I never got to read the 365 letters. They disappeared into smoke beside the Little Red River many years ago.

In the end, I didn't need them.

The greeting cards told me everything I needed to know.