💔 We had an argument the week before my father passed away suddenly

My father and I had a fairly heated argument about my career choices exactly eight days before he passed away suddenly from a cardiac arrest, and I have spent every single day since then replaying that specific conversation, wishing I had handled it differently even though at the time I genuinely believed I was standing up for a decision that mattered to me. The argument itself was not even about anything dramatic looking back, he wanted me to apply for a government job through a family connection, I wanted to keep pursuing something in a completely different field that he did not fully understand or trust the stability of, and things got heated enough that I left the house that evening without saying a proper goodbye, just a quick see you later on my way out the door. We did not really talk much in the days after, both of us being stubborn in our own way, assuming there would be plenty of time later to properly sort things out once tempers cooled down naturally the way they always had after previous disagreements over the years. That assumption turned out to be wrong in the worst possible way, and now I am left with a version of my father's last real conversation with me being an argument neither of us actually resolved before it was too late to resolve it at all. My mother keeps reassuring me that he was proud of me regardless, that the argument was just a normal father son disagreement and did not actually change how he felt about me deep down, and I believe her when she says it, but belief does not fully quiet the specific guilt of not being the one to make the first move toward fixing things while there was still time to actually do that. Has anyone else carried an unresolved conversation like this with someone who passed away before there was a chance to properly close it out? Genuinely curious how, or if, that specific kind of guilt actually eases over time, since right now it still feels exactly as heavy as it did in the first few weeks.

Your mother telling you he was proud of you regardless is something I clung to too after a similar argument with my own father, and I eventually believed it, though it took longer than I expected. What helped was realizing an argument about one decision was never the full picture of an entire relationship built over years. That last disagreement doesn't get to define everything that came before it either.

Assuming there would be time later is such a normal thing to do, most families argue and make up eventually without ever thinking this specific time would be different. I do not think the guilt fully eases the way we might hope, but it does get quieter with time, at least that has been true for me. The fact that you are still thinking about fixing things says something real about how much it mattered.

Had a similar argument with my father about a job decision a few months before he passed unexpectedly too, and the guilt of an unresolved last real conversation is something I still sit with some nights, so I understand exactly what you mean about it not fully going away. What helped slightly was writing him an actual letter afterward, not to send anywhere, just to finally say what I never got the chance to say.