Hulk Hogan Was a Horcrux of My Relationship With My Father

I have been thinking about Harry Potter lately, specifically the concept of horcruxes.

For anyone who never got into the series, a horcrux is an object that contains a piece of someone’s soul. As long as it exists, that person cannot truly be gone. Voldemort scattered pieces of himself across the world so that no single loss could destroy him completely. Something of him always remained.

I never expected to relate to that concept the way I do now.

My father and I had a language. A lot of fathers and sons do. Ours included Hulk Hogan. Wrestling was part of how we connected, part of what we shared, part of the texture of what it felt like to be his kid. When he passed, that world did not disappear. Hulk Hogan was still out there. Still cutting promos, still showing up, still being Hulk Hogan. And as long as he was around, some small piece of that connection between me and my Pops stayed alive. A horcrux. Something that held a fragment of what we had together.

I was telling my wife about the Hulk Hogan documentary and how much it moved me. More than I expected. And as I was talking I realized why. It was not just about Hogan. It was about what Hogan represented. A living link to my father. A thread that kept something going even after he was gone.

That thread is gone now too.

Some losses are obvious. Some of them sneak up on you through a documentary on a Tuesday night when you are just trying to watch something and suddenly you are somewhere else entirely, missing someone you will never truly forget.