Last week marked twelve years since my dad passed away.

Every year, I’ve found little ways to remember him. Usually I make his favorite cherry chocolate cake. This year, I didn’t. I made spaghetti for dinner and a chocolate cake instead. At first, I wondered if something had changed.

Maybe it had.

Not because I miss him any less, but because grief has a way of changing as we do.

This past Sunday, my pastor was preaching about generational patterns and how they can affect families. As I listened, my mind began wandering. Not away from the message, but deeper into it.

I’ve also spent the past several months writing a book about the lasting impact of words. As I’ve worked through memories from my own childhood and reflected on how words shape our hearts, I’ve found myself asking questions I never thought to ask before.

For the first time, I found myself thinking about my dad before he was my dad.

He was a little boy once.

He was a military child.

He had dreams, fears, friendships, disappointments, and experiences long before I was ever part of his story.

What was it like moving from place to place?

What did he love as a child?

Who influenced him?

What words stayed with him?

What shaped the man I knew as Dad?

And then it hit me.

I’ll never get to ask him.

Those questions weren’t on my mind twelve years ago. They came with becoming an adult, becoming a parent, and writing a book that has challenged me to look beyond people’s actions and wonder about the stories that shaped them.

When we’re children, we tend to believe our parents’ story begins with us. As adults, we begin to realize they lived an entire lifetime before we were ever born. They were someone’s child before they became our parent.

Maybe that’s one of the quiet ways grief changes over the years.

At first, we grieve the memories we’ll never make.

Later, we grieve the stories we’ll never hear.

I don’t know why these thoughts came to me this year instead of the years before. Maybe it’s because time has a way of giving us a different perspective. Maybe it’s because writing this book has taught me that every person is shaped by words, experiences, and stories that others may never fully know.

Whatever the reason, I’ve realized there are chapters of my dad’s life that I’ll never get to read.

I wish I could sit across the table from him and ask those questions.

I wish I could hear the stories only he could tell.

But since I can’t, I’ll keep cherishing the chapters I was blessed to be part of, and I’ll thank God for the father I knew.

Some questions will have to wait until Heaven.