The last few days have given me a to-do list and much to think about. The 5th was the forty-first anniversary of my stepfather's death. Career Army and a complicated man, he was the only dad I had. Sixteen years older than my mother, I was not quite six when he appeared with toys and candy at the start of an extended courtship with my mother. They married the week I turned ten. Following a heart attack just months into this second marriage, our location in the tropics was to be his last for active duty He was thereafter a civil service employee in the same position until after my high school graduation and the start of college. Retirement meant a return to the US. Little did I know that he would not live to see college graduation, dying at age 58 in my final semester. I was 22, and shaken, not only by the circumstances of his sudden loss but of the implosion of my mother's life as well.
He was not easy to deal with and we often clashed. His adult children found him challenging to deal with and as a teenager, I was way too moody and hormonal to garner much more than a stream of sarcasm or criticism from either parent.
I hope he would have been proud to take the role of dad and provider and content when I could face the world as an adult, but I'll never know.
I lit a candle in silent acknowledgement of his passing and offered thanks for the travel, education and material things he felt were important to provide and show love.
From him learned the need to tell people you love them, something he found difficult. I hope when I leave this world that anyone I've left behind knows without question that I genuinely cared for them,
