I am so happy that you were able to build that emotional connection.
My dad is terminally ill and often I think about what I will miss most when he is no more. And I realized it would be the depth of emotional connection - a person who knows you in and out and unconditionally loves you.
I try to steel myself about the coming eventuality, but all I know is it's going to be a deep abyss and it will take everything to climb out of it.
I lost my mom to cancer when I was 17. She fought with it for 6.5 years prior. Even knowing it was coming it was devastating. 24 years later I still miss her, I'm sure I always will. It hurts knowing that I'm now older than she was when she passed.
When it happened it was the worst emotional pain I had experienced, it does get better in time. Your feelings are valid. You don't have to feel whatever anyone else thinks you should feel. It feels cliche that it gets better in time, in my experience tho it does. I'm sorry your dad and family is going thru that. Oddly I found Cyberpunk 2077 to be therapeutic on coming to terms with that situation. In the game you play a character who essentially has a terminal disease, there are a lot of moments in the game that rang very true to the emotions I experienced.
When your dad eventually departs, you are allowed to feel anything. I have been the type to laugh at a funeral remembering something funny the departed said or did. If you feel like crying that's ok too.
I lost my dad 14 years ago. I hope you get to have as much of the remaining time together as possible.
What's odd is that I still don't feel the need to look at photos of him. Like, no need whatsoever. I don't have a photo of my late dad on the wall, even though we had a truly excellent father-son relationship with a lot of warmth. The true memory of him resides in my head; and what's more, I notice myself replicating his exact body language at times. Explicitly realizing this always feels funny, almost like I want to express gratitude to him for "inheriting" those movements to me :). I think the bonds still hold strong, and they forever will, but, oddly, there's no need whatsoever to visualize it with a photo. It's simply much deeper than that.
On another side, I often miss the ability to ask my dad "factual", practical questions. E.g. -- because he was a construction engineer -- how to do some specific thing in grandpa's house renovations; how to position a beam, etc. During the first months after his death, this was a common recurring thought: I'm stuck while building something, but "hey, I'll just ask dad tomorrow how to do it right; yeah, I'll just call him" -- following by "oh, I forgot I can't". After this, there was always an interesting feeling of emptiness or standstill -- not sadness, just a really deep understanding that, no matter what, life moves on. And I still get to live mine. I actually came to enjoy those moments of emptiness.
Thanks for sharing your story, it is very moving. Grief will have different stages; to me, it has mostly been really deep introspection. Take it easy, mate.
I try to steel myself about the coming eventuality, but all I know is it's going to be a deep abyss and it will take everything to climb out of it.