Today would have been my father’s 94th birthday.
Franklin H. Hopkins was born on August 4, 1932. It is almost impossible to imagine him at ninety-four, and yet today I found myself wondering what he would have looked like, what he would have thought, and what stories he might still have been telling.
My father was a quiet man.
He was not someone who filled every silence merely because it was there. He listened. He considered. And when he spoke, there was usually something worth hearing.
I miss that.
I miss being able to talk with him. I miss noodling through an idea with him and hearing his perspective. I miss the stories he carried—stories from a life and a world that now seem increasingly far away.
He has been gone for a long time, and grief changes as the years pass. It does not always remain sharp or demanding. Sometimes it settles quietly into the background of our lives, only to step forward again on an ordinary Tuesday because the date on the calendar reminds us of someone we once loved.
I do not miss my father in quite the same way I miss my mother. Every relationship leaves its own particular absence. But I do miss him.
I miss knowing he was there.
Only two of my children, Rachel and Craig, had the opportunity to meet their grandfather. The others were born after he passed away. They know his name and whatever pieces of him I have managed to preserve through photographs and stories, but they never had the chance to sit beside him or listen to him speak.
There is a sadness in that.
So much of a person disappears when they are no longer here—not because they have been forgotten, but because the smallest details are so difficult to hold on to.
The sound of a voice.
The expression on a face when a familiar story was about to begin.
The pauses between sentences.
The ordinary conversations we never realized we would one day long to hear again.
Today, as I thought about my father, another realization came over me.
Tom and I are now the ones at the top.
There is no longer a generation above us. No parents to call with a question. No one who remembers us before we became spouses, parents, grandparents, professionals, or the people everyone else now looks toward.
We are it.
The family tree stretches downward from where we stand—to our children and grandchildren, to lives still unfolding and generations still to come.
It is an honor, but it also feels strangely vulnerable.
There is comfort in having someone above you, even when you are fully grown. There is comfort in knowing there is still someone who came before—someone who holds the earlier chapters of your story.
And then, one day, you realize those chapters live primarily within you.
We become the storytellers.
We become the keepers of the names, the photographs, the traditions, and the memories.
We become the ones responsible for telling the generations beneath us where they came from.
Perhaps that is one of the quiet responsibilities of growing older: not simply to mourn the people who came before us, but to keep something of them moving forward.
So today, I am remembering my father.
Not with a grand tribute or an attempt to summarize an entire life in a few polished paragraphs. Simply with gratitude.
For the conversations.
For the stories.
For the thoughtful silences.
For the part of him that still lives in me.
Today would have been your 94th birthday.
I miss you.
Krissy Pellegriti • August 4, 2026
~When There Is No One Above You~
Deliberate Desires 