Still waiting at the door

 The phrase "I'm still waiting at the door" is likely to refer to the song titled "still waiting at the door," which Ernesto Virel and Tapas released in May 2025. The song has gained popularity with various versions and performances circulating, including karaoke versions and interpretations from other artists. The lyrics are based on themes of fading love, silence, and holding on to memories, implying themes of missing and perhaps waiting for lost love.

Still waiting at the door

There comes a time in every father's life when the house that once echoed with children's laughter falls silent, when the rooms that were once too small suddenly feel vast and empty. The door that once swung open countless times a day—letting in scraped knees to be bandaged, homework struggles to be solved, and bedtime stories to be shared—now stands as a monument to memories and a beacon of hope for what might still come.

I built this home with my own hands, each nail driven with the promise of shelter and security for those I loved most. The calluses on my palms were earned not through mere labor, but through love made manifest in wood and stone. Every room was planned with purpose: bedrooms positioned to catch the morning light, a kitchen large enough for family gatherings, a living room where we would create the memories that would sustain us through whatever storms might come. I never imagined that one day I would walk through these rooms alone, my footsteps the only sound breaking the silence.

The sacrifices seemed so natural then, so obvious in their necessity. Working late into the night to provide for growing bodies and expanding dreams, missing some moments to ensure there would be many more, saying yes to their ambitions even when it meant saying goodbye to my own. I watched them chase their dreams with the fierce pride that only a father knows, cheering from the sidelines as they soared toward futures I had helped make possible. Their success was my success, their happiness my greatest achievement.

But success in raising children carries within it the seeds of its own particular heartbreak. To raise them well means to prepare them to leave, to give them wings strong enough to carry them far beyond the nest you so carefully built. The irony is cruel yet necessary—the better you love them, the more equipped they become to live without you. And so they did what I had trained them to do: they flew.

The silence that followed was not immediate. At first, there were phone calls and visits, holidays that brought the house back to life with familiar voices and the comfortable chaos of family. But life has its own momentum, and gradually the calls became less frequent, the visits more scattered. New families formed, new priorities emerged, and the old rhythms gave way to the demands of their own lives. I understood, even as my heart struggled to accept what my mind knew to be natural and right.

Now, in these twilight years, I find myself keeper of a museum of memories. Each room holds treasures invisible to others: the height marks on the doorframe, the small dent in the wall where a bicycle handlebar once struck, the window sill worn smooth by countless elbows resting there during conversations that seemed so ordinary then but feel precious now. I maintain it all, not out of an inability to let go, but out of hope that someday it might once again serve its intended purpose.

The door has become my companion in this wait. How many times have I found myself looking toward it expectantly, my heart quickening at the sound of a car in the driveway, only to watch the stranger pass by? How often have I imagined the sound of familiar footsteps, the jingle of keys, the call of "I'm home" that would transform this house back into the home it was meant to be? The door judges me not for these moments of foolish hope; it simply stands ready, as I do.

There is a particular loneliness that comes with aging—not just the absence of people, but the absence of purpose. For so many years, my purpose was clear and consuming: to provide, to protect, to guide, to love. My identity was inseparable from my role as their father. Now, with that active phase of fatherhood concluded, I struggle to understand who I am meant to be. The love remains, stronger than ever, but it has nowhere to go except inward, where it sometimes threatens to consume me with its intensity.

I do not blame them for building their own lives, for following the paths I helped them discover. This is what good parents do—they make themselves unnecessary. Yet knowing this intellectually does little to ease the ache that settles in my chest each evening as darkness falls and the house settles into another night of solitude. I raised them to be independent, and they have succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. The pain I feel is not their failure but my success, and this makes it no easier to bear.

Sometimes I find myself speaking aloud, carrying on conversations with empty chairs, sharing thoughts and observations as if they were still here to listen. I tell them about the garden, about the neighbors, about the small victories and defeats that make up my days. I offer advice they no longer need and wisdom they have already surpassed. These one-sided conversations might seem like the behavior of a man losing his grip on reality, but they feel like acts of faith—declarations that the bonds between us transcend physical presence.

The hardest moments come not in the deep silence of solitude, but in the fleeting instances when I forget. When I buy groceries for four instead of one, when I set extra places at the table, when I find myself saving up stories to share with people who are not there to hear them. These moments of forgetting are followed by the sharp remembering, and the cycle of hope and disappointment begins anew.

Yet I continue to wait, not because I am foolish enough to believe that time can be reversed, but because I am wise enough to know that love is patient. Perhaps they will return not as the children who once filled these rooms with noise and joy, but as adults who understand, finally, what I have always known—that home is not a place but a person, and that person has been waiting at the door all along.

In my waiting, I have learned that a father's love is not diminished by absence or dimmed by time. It burns steady and true, a lighthouse beacon calling ships home through the darkness. Whether they see its light or not, whether they choose to follow it back to shore, the light continues to shine. This is what fathers do: we wait, we hope, and we love without condition or expiration date.

The door remains unlocked, as it always has been, as it always will be. And I remain here, keeper of memories and guardian of hope, still waiting for the sound of familiar footsteps, still ready to welcome them home.

I'm still waiting at the door Lyrics

… I built our home with bleeding hands

Laid each brick with love and plans

You were my light, my reason why

Now I just talk to an empty sky

… I'm still waiting at the door

Where your laughter lived before

Every night, I whisper low

Come back home, don't let me go

But silence is all I know

… You wore your cap, I fixed your tie

Watched you chase your dreams and fly

I gave you wings, I stayed behind

But now you're gone, and so is time

… I'm still waiting at the door

Where your footsteps touch the floor

Even pain begins to fade

But the love, it always stays

Still alone, still afraid

… I don't need much, just one more day

To hear you call, to hear you say

That I remember who you are

But wishes don't go that far

… So I sing here on this stage

Old and tired, full of ache

Not for gold, not for fame

Just to call out your name

Still waiting, still the same

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