Today would have been my dad's 73rd birthday. Here's what I do with that.

My dad was born on September 5th.

He died when I was 18. I'm 43 now. Which means I've spent 25 years marking this day without him — trying to figure out each year what the right thing to do with it is. Some years I push through it. Some years it pushes back. This year it's both.

He would have been 73 today.

I try to picture what that looks like. A 73 year old version of my dad. Would he have slowed down or would he have been the kind of man who never slowed down? Would he have been at the ranch in Grass Range this summer when we brought the kids through? Would he have been in one of those rafts on the Snake River? Would he have been the one checking my son's bow hunting gear instead of me?

I don't get to know the answers to any of those questions. That's the specific cruelty of losing a parent young. You don't just lose the person they were. You lose every version of them you never got to meet.

September 10th would have been my parents' anniversary. Five days from now. This week holds a lot.

I've been thinking about what I actually know about grief after 25 years of it. Not clinical grief — just the lived version. The kind that shows up on September 5th every year whether you planned for it or not.

Here's what I know.

It doesn't follow a schedule. Some years his birthday hits like a truck. Some years it's a quiet ache. This year it's sitting heavier than last year and I don't entirely know why. Maybe it's the road trip through Montana — visiting the ranch, standing at his grave in Lewistown, watching my kids experience the places he loved. Maybe it's my oldest graduating and moving into the next chapter without a grandfather who should have been there. Maybe September just hits different at 43 than it did at 33.

There's no logic to it. You just feel what you feel and you let it move through.

The missing reshapes but doesn't end. When I was 18 and he died I missed the man I knew. At 25 I missed the father-in-law I needed. At 30 I missed the grandfather my kids would never have. At 43 I miss all of those versions simultaneously — plus the 73 year old version I'm imagining today who would have been at the soccer games and the bow hunting trips and the graduation ceremony.

The missing doesn't shrink. It just takes different shapes as your life fills in around it.

The people who knew him become more precious over time. My mom. His brother on the ranch in Grass Range. The people who can still say "I remember when he" and mean it from firsthand experience. Those people are irreplaceable in a way that becomes clearer every year. They carry pieces of him that I don't have access to otherwise.

Going back to Montana this summer wasn't just a road trip. It was an act of preservation.

You pass him forward whether you mean to or not. My kids never met him. They know him through stories and photographs and the way I talk about Montana and the ranch and hunting and the things he loved. They stood at his grave in Lewistown. They rode across land he rode across. They carry him without knowing they're carrying him.

That's not nothing. That's actually everything.

The days that were his become yours to define. September 5th used to be just his. Now it's mine too — the day I remember him, the day I take stock of who I'm becoming, the day I think about whether I'm the kind of dad he would have been proud of. It's heavy and it's mine and I've stopped trying to make it feel lighter than it is.

Five days from now would have been my parents' anniversary.

My mom has carried that date alone for 25 years. She doesn't complain about it. She doesn't make a production of it. She just carries it — the way she's carried everything since he died, which is quietly and with more grace than most people could manage.

We took the kids to her place in Bigfork this summer on the road trip. Swan River. The same place I ran around as a kid. She watched her grandkids walk the property and take turns driving the 1923 Ford T bucket she keeps — enjoying life in a hundred year old car in Western Montana while their grandma laughed at every second of it.

He would have loved every second of that.

I texted her and my siblings this morning. Told them I was thinking about him. They said they were too. We didn't need to say much more than that. Twenty-five years in, the language of this grief is pretty simple.

We miss him. We always will. And we keep going because that's what he would have wanted and because there's no other option worth considering.

I've written about this before but it bears repeating on a week like this one.

Losing a parent young taught me more about family finances than any textbook or job ever did. Not because my dad left things in perfect order — he didn't. He was 48 years old and not planning on dying and the financial aftermath of that was something my mom had to figure out in the middle of grief.

That experience shaped every financial decision I've made as a dad.

The conversation I'm asking you to have this week isn't complicated. It's just uncomfortable. Sit down with your spouse and answer these three questions:

Three questions. One conversation. The most important financial thing you can do for your family this week.

Not because something is going to happen. Because you love them enough to make sure they'd be okay if it did.

Do it this week. Do it for the dads who didn't get the chance to.

I hope he knows about the ranch visit this summer. I hope he knows his grandson went bow hunting for the first time this weekend with his uncle and grandpa and cousins. I hope he knows his granddaughter is playing junior year soccer and she's good and she's tough and she got that from somewhere.

I hope he knows I stood at his grave in Lewistown Montana with four kids who carry his name and his blood and his love of that land even though they never got to meet him.

I hope he knows I think about him every September 5th and most days in between.

I hope he knows I'm trying.

Happy birthday Dad. We miss you every day.

My daughter's first junior year soccer game is this week. We'll talk about what it feels like to watch your kid play a sport they love knowing the clock is running — and what junior year looks like when you've already sent one through senior year and you know now how fast it goes.