Saudade

They say saudade, a word in Portuguese that has no translation. In English, there’s “longing” or “missing,” but something always seems to be missing. Saudade is more than absence; it’s a kind of presence turned inside out, an empty space that fills the chest. No other language can quite capture this feeling. Saudade is the ache of reaching for someone who’s no longer there, yet somehow feeling their closeness, as if love itself shaped the air around you to fit their outline.

The other day, while sipping coffee and staring at nothing in particular, that word, saudade (yearning), slipped quietly into my mind. And it made me think of you.

I didn’t see you being born because, at the very last moment, your mother sent me out for something—some small detail I can’t even remember now. But I did arrive in time to see your first smile. It was for me — of that, I’m sure. It was as though you wanted to tell me something you hadn’t yet learned how to say. A secret that lingered in the air, unfinished.

Later, life took its course. When you were ten, we met every two weeks. Later, it was once a month. There was always something, some small gap growing between us, and it didn’t seem like much — until it began to hurt. I’d see you and try to remember every detail, like someone gathering small, precious stones, afraid they might wear away with time.

When I moved to Israel, our meetings became images on a screen, a conversation that was almost real but without the weight of touch. To love someone this way, through a screen, is to have a kind of careful, practically blind love. You try to hold on to the sparkle in their eyes, to the subtle shifts in their voice, like listening to rain fall at a distance. I see your hands move, catching small gestures that slip through, wondering if you feel the same.

And on the day of your wedding, I was here. I couldn’t go because the ticket was too expensive, and all I had were the photos you sent me. I looked at those pictures as if leafing through an old book of memories, trying to imagine what the images couldn’t capture — the sound of your laughter, the emotions in words I never heard. This saudade (wistfulness) is heavier, the kind for moments you’ve never lived. Things that happen only once and then slip away, like a dream that fades with morning light.

Maybe, in the end, saudade (melancholy) is just that: accepting these suspended pieces of life. And that’s what remains. What I couldn’t live by your side, every lost embrace, every laugh muted by distance, has become an empty space that saudade fills in its own way. I’m here, holding onto the weight of these memories as if they were an echo that lingers after all else has stilled.

And I know I’ve never said this before, but there’s an enormous emptiness when the call ends. I really wanted to say that I feel an immense saudade (ache) for you. And that I love you, daughter, more than words between us have ever been able to hold.