It may seem belated but here we are anyway...

My step-dad Mike died May 11th of this year, but it was just two days ago that while I was putting my son down for his nap that it truly occurred to me that he was dead. I had expected the realization would smack me in the face when I walked in the door of my mother's house when I returned home. It didn't. Instead it landed steadily on my shoulders across the planet in Singapore. At any rate, as I start to grapple with this whole grieving thing as well as adjusting to this funny little South East Asian country, I thought I'd post the comments I wrote for his service - only because I promised myself I would. I think it's part of my process.

My mother often reminds me of how I first met my step-father, Mike Meade when I was 3 months old. She and my father owned a record store and they needed a computer programmer. She found Mike in the yellow pages and when she met with him to explain what they needed done, she brought me along. I of course don’t remember this, but this did begin both of my parents’ connection with Mike. My dad and him became good friends and my dad also became a computer programmer; he often said that Mike Meade taught him everything he knew about computers.
Mike and my mother reconnected and started dating when I was twelve and he moved in with us when I was thirteen. When I told my dad that my mother was seeing Mike he said, “Oh good, you’ll both be in good hands. Mike and my mom got married June 3, 1990, my junior year of high school. I don’t know of anyone who will disagree with me when I say he was the best thing that ever happened to my mom. Mike was my step-father for 23 years.
The step-parent and child relationship is a different kind of relationship for whatever reason I can’t quite put my finger on what makes it so. I have often thought that some parents and children are well matched, where parents easily meet the needs of their children or parents and children are not well-matched and the parents struggle in knowing what their children need. As a step-dad and daughter, Mike and I were very well-suited to one another.
He did do fatherly things with me. He came to my dance recitals, he gave me my first summer job. He taught me how to drive (and in doing so, he succeeded where other had failed). On Christmas Eve, we’d always go Christmas shopping for mom. When I was nineteen, my boyfriend wanted a socket set for his birthday. Mike came with me to Sears to help me pick one out. He explained to me why you always want good tools and then proceeded to walk out with a new table saw and shop vac. The following Spring, Mike was helping me change my bicycle tire. I needed a new tube for the tire so we went over to the Bike Gallery on Sandy Blvd – and we both walked out with new bikes. We weren’t allowed to shop together after this, but it was these kind of excursions where in addition to being a father to me, he also became my cohort and my co-conspiritor.
Just because of the way things worked out I did end up spending a lot of one on one time with him without my mom. His office and my high school were both downtown so I occasionally stopped in on my way to dance class. My first two years of college, I was a courier downtown and would often stop by when it was slow. On rainy days, I’d walk in and he’d put a space heater at my feet. I had a knack for always showing up on office potluck days and he’d tease me about how I’d eat the entire office under the table.
Because I so often saw him on a daily basis, we had a lot of conversations and we had a relationship where we could talk about a lot of different things. In addition to mom, work, my boyfriend (or relationship at the time), school, we’d also talk about books, movies or music. Mike would often read books I liked and we would talk about them. He was interested in everything, so it was easy to find things for him to read. On his night table alone, I found The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats, Cormac McCarthy’s The road, Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The Shaker Legacy, Killer Angels by Michael Shaara and the Holy Bible. He never finished college, but he was one of the most educated men I know.
He was never one of those step parents who, when I called home, would immediately hand the phone over to my mother. Often, we’d talk half an hour before he’d tell me that she wasn’t home. And he often called me on his way to work or while he was running errands. Truth be told, he called me more than my mother does.
I could go on and on about Mike and all the things we did together and talked about. And I don’t know if I can capture what an important part of my life he was or how much he did for me. As a college English professor, I do feel I should have some esoteric quote from some dead poet that captures what he was for me, but I don’t. The only thing I can think of that does begin to capture our relationship is that scene toward the end of Finding Nemo where Dorie says to Marlin, “I don’t know. I can’t remember. But when I look at you, I’m home.”
What I’m thankful for with Mike is that we could talk about anything and I don’t know how common that is in parent-child relationships. When he and mom visited my husband, baby, and me in February, he and I would walk the dogs at night. Now when I look back, these are some of my most favorite conversations. The last couple of years Mike had started doing a lot of personal growth work – not because he had any particular problems, but as he told me, he just thought he could be happier. He took some personal development courses at Landmark Education, he started going back to AA meetings, he went to therapy – first to individual sessions and then to group sessions. On our dog walks, I asked him about his most recent group. He said there were several women about my age in the group and it was funny, he said, apparently, he looked like a dad and just his presence brought up their dad issues. But he said, it was funny; he was able to talk with them and he helped them resolve their dad issues. He said it felt good to make a difference. I said, Mikey you know it’s funny, I don’t have any dad issues with you. And not that I’m the kind of person who doesn’t have issues. I have a lot of issues with a lot of people. But I don’t have any issues with you and I never have. And I said, you know you make a difference and we have a Mike Meade fan club with several of us in it – and we think you should be sainted. Though the Pope isn’t exactly taking my calls so I don’t know if you stand much of a chance.
He said, well I have a few regrets and I often think I could have done more or said more. But Mike always did right by me. Mike was the kind of person where it was just a bit lighter when he was around. Often I felt better after talking to him. I felt a little more relaxed. I felt heard and like he was interested in what I was saying or like I was saying something that he hadn’t thought about before. I felt happier and I always felt loved. And for me this was the difference he made. He wasn’t up for the Nobel Peace Prize and he didn’t dig wells for poor villages. But he did leave all of a little better than he found us. And I don’t know many people who can say that.