stepfather – Natalie J. Case

A lot of people have complicated relationships with their fathers, and I think current political and health matters probably don’t really help in that arena.

I have LGBTQ+ friends whose fathers have thrown them away, disowned them, told them to never come back. I have friends who had abusive fathers, drug addict fathers, fathers who were too young and too afraid to stick around. I know people who never knew their fathers, and never had a male father figure step into their lives to fill the void.

But I also have friends who had amazing dads or stepdads or granddads who did what dads are supposed to do, who loved those kids and helped them grow up in a world designed to tear them down. Those who taught them how to ride a bike, bait a hook, stand up for themselves and for others. Those that knew the world outside of childhood could be could and cruel, and helped prepare them to thrive anyway.

I was fortunate, even if my relationship with my father has occasionally been rocky due to so many reasons that are rooted in who I was in my puberty years (think far-right, evangelical Christian) and who he was (as in, not that), that my dad was there for me. We don’t always agree, even now that I’ve gone the far right of him to the far left of him, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he loves me for who I am.

My Dad and Me

And I had a pretty cool stepfather too. Bob and I didn’t always see eye to eye either, but he was always there to lend a hand when I needed it and he loved us even if he never said those words.

I hope that all of you who fill those roles, whether you’re blood or not, take a little time today to give yourself a moment to know you are awesome. And if you are someone looking for how to help the next generation, whether you are cis-male, trans-male or nonbinary, consider finding that one on one relationship with a kid who needs it, and yeah, I don’t just mean the under 18 crowd. There are tons of folks in their 20s who could really use a father figure to help them find their way into what being an adult really means.

Even if you’re one of those guys who never really had an old man, maybe especially if you’re one of those guys, be the father-figure you wanted in your life.

So Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads and Dad-adjacent folks out there. Being that it is Sunday and my job #2 has no work for me to be doing today, I get to write for a while before I get on with the housework that needs doing. I’m off to do that…and drink more coffee.

Cover Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

My stepfather died on Friday at a few minutes after 2pm, more than two hours after we pulled the life support.

When I first met Robert Flory twenty-one years ago, I was not his biggest fan, I’ll admit. I thought he wasn’t good enough for my mother, I thought he was a gruff old man, grungy from his work in the oil fields. He was opinionated and sometimes brash, stubborn and not at all the man I had imagined for my mother, when I’d imagined a man for my mother at all.

My father remarried while I was still in my teens. My mother didn’t remarry until both my brother and I were adults. Bob came into my life at a time when I thought things were going well. I had a good job, my family was healthy and I was happy.

In some ways, I guess, I saw Bob as a threat to that happiness. His presence tilted the balance, and while I wanted my mother to have love and happiness in her life, I was pretty sure he wasn’t the one for her. I was, however, also deeply changing inside. My faith had been shattered, refound, reformed and I had learned that the only true love was unconditional love, and I needed to practice it in order to have it.

Three years into the relationship, that unconditional love was challenged as he asked her to marry him and move to California so that he could find work and be near his family. We (myself, my brother and his family) followed, because the work opportunities were promising, and beat anything El Paso had to offer.

In the years since then, Bob has been a part of my family. He filled a spot we didn’t know needed filling. I got to know the man, spent hours listening to him talk about any number of things he was passionate about, from geology and science, to politics, to people in various locations he had visited in his life.

Bob lived a pretty incredible life. He went to the antarctic. He lived in Pakistan for a time. He did search and rescue. He was on the ski patrol. He loved old westerns, both books and movies. He loved digging in the dirt and making his yard beautiful. He had a sense of adventure you don’t see much anymore. There wasn’t a dirt road he didn’t want to drive down.

More than all that, Bob was a man who loved my mother, there is no denying that. He stepped into a place I had thought as mine, the protector, the person who would take care of her and keep her safe. Maybe that’s really what rankled me all those years ago. Today, I treasure the memory of him. He was a good man who tried to do the right thing, every single minute of every single day, and he worked hard to provide for the two of them.

He also volunteered and supported a number of charities that were dear to his heart. Locally, he volunteered at the Ruth Bancroft Gardens in Walnut Creek, CA, which is where he learned his love of the succulents that fill the gardens of their home.

He retired a few years ago, and had taken a job at the local Walmart to help make ends meet.

Bob made friends everywhere he went. He was gregarious and outgoing, happy to talk to anyone and everyone about nearly anything.

It’s hard to imagine that his booming voice has been silenced, that his dirty hands have been stilled, that his giant heart has been stopped. He filled a hole we didn’t realize needed filling, and now that hole stands empty.

There once was a man named Bob. On Friday, May 18th he breathed his last as we stood witness.

What is remembered, lives. Live on, Robert Flory. Live on.

Tag: stepfather

to all the dads out there

once there was a man named Bob