The Echoes at Our Kitchen Table

What I Tell My Son About the Grandfather He'll Never Meet

Father’s Day doesn’t always arrive with a Hallmark card.

Before the barbecues and celebrations start, this day carries a quiet weight that a lot of us feel. For some, it’s a reminder of a dad who passed away too soon. For others, a reminder of a father who walked out. It can bring up grief, longing, or a sharp sense of missing out. If today feels heavy or complicated for you, I want to acknowledge that first. You are not alone.

In our house, Father’s Day falls right in the middle of Pride Month, and lately, the questions from my oldest son have kept coming.

He keeps asking, “Why can’t I meet your dad?”

The truth is a heavy topic for a child, and honestly, it’s still deeply painful for me. How do you look into your innocent child’s eyes and explain that the grandfather he will never meet walked out just weeks before my wedding? That he chose absence because he could not accept that love between two men was real? Every time my son asks, that old rejection stings all over again. But I look at my boys, and I use that ache to fuel the safe, fiercely loving home they deserve.

Fortunately, my son’s curiosity does not stop there. He also asks about his other grandpa, my father-in-law, who is a steady presence in our lives. In just a few minutes, we’ll be packing up to spend the day together.

Years ago, my father-in-law faced every parent’s worst nightmare when glioblastoma stole his oldest son. I think about my brother-in-law often, especially on days like today. I see his memory alive in his beautiful twins, and I know he would be so incredibly proud watching all his nieces and nephews running around the yard together today.

When my husband and I built our family, I knew I could never replace the son my father-in-law lost. But as he opened his grieving heart to me, a bittersweet healing happened. By letting me love him as another son, he quietly filled the empty space my own father left behind.

We did not inherit a traditional family structure. Through gestational surrogacy, my husband and I built ours, one boy genetically his, one mine, both entirely ours.

And this is precisely why we celebrate Pride. This is why visibility matters. When we share our stories, we show the world that family is something you build and choose.

Representation isn’t just about being seen. It changes what a kid believes is possible for them. It tells the next generation of LGBTQ+ youth that their futures can be filled with love, marriage, and parenthood.

And it tells my own two boys that whoever they grow up to love, they will never have to wonder if home is safe.

As an HR leader, I connect with people every day who ask how to build inclusion and belonging at work. But the truest definition of those words does not start in a corporate boardroom. It starts right at our kitchen tables, in the ways we choose to love, heal, and expand our definitions of family.

To every dad, stepdad, foster dad, father-in-law, and grieving heart today: biology doesn’t define your impact. Your love does. Your presence does. Your choice to stay does.

Happy Father’s Day to everyone defining family on their own terms.