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I just completed the fifteenth anniversary of my stepfather’s death and it will soon be Father’s Day. So John Albert Hansbrough is on my mind. He died in the spring of 2000 at the age of 81. He was 49 when he married my mother, and I like to think that in many ways John and I grew up together. I was 21 when I first met him, still reeling from the difficult years at the end of my parents’ marriage. I was not ready, nor was I mature enough, to give up my own suffering to make room in my life for this boastful, loud, big (6 ′ 4 ″, about 240 pounds), extrovert and boastful trader.

My mother had moved on in her life because she had to: perpetually dependent on others, my mother was charming and charming as long as her needs were met. And in Juan they were. I resented him for his difference with my father, who was small, intellectual, distant, quiet, managerial class and not bald (did my mother not discriminate at all with her taste for men? Relationship?); I was annoyed with him because he was a voluntary caregiver for my mother, which allowed him to continue being the child that he was. In short, it was difficult to see my mother happily cared for when she had never cared for me in the way that I thought I needed. The more I resisted John’s intrusion into my life, the louder and boastful he became. My visits to his home were a test of my patience and tolerance, most of which my smart mouth and I failed.

Even a visit where I made my mother the target of all my uncontrolled rage. We had a terrible fight, or rather I had a terrible fight with her. About what, I’m embarrassed to mention that it was so trivially youthful. When you’re brimming with as much toxicity as I am at the time, it doesn’t take much to cause a Vesuvian eruption. Using his usual strategy of retreating behind a closed bedroom door, he left me screaming and angry in the living room, where John was sitting quietly in his favorite chair. Got up; he approached me, brat and sobbing in frustrated despair; He took me in his giant arms and whispered, “You have no idea how much your mother loves you.” And with that I collapsed, and he took me with him to his chair and held me for as long as I needed to cry.

He put up with my shit for years, still managing to love me and provide just what I needed at the right time. Even more remarkable because John never had any children of his own, yet he instinctively knew how to be a father at the time. My mother, my demanding mother!, She loved him because he was devoted and kind. By giving me the fatherly love I had wanted for so long, John Albert Hansbrough became my real father that day. And he also gave me back my mother.

From then on, John and I became good close friends. I just adored him for everything he had taught me about love, responsibility, and connection. I did what I could to support him in caring for my mother, as his health worsened and his disability worsened due to his passivity and voluntary helplessness. He passed away before her, himself exhausted and ill, but a caretaker to the end.

When I was grieving for him, a friend told me what she had done after the death of her own father. He told me to go find a jewelry amulet of an animal whose features reminded me of what I admired about him, put it on a chain and wear it around my neck; he would be with me that way, and I might be aware of it. his example.

I chose a moose figure that is also part human, a stylized warrior, upright and with open arms. The very image of what John was: big, strong, fearless, open. I used it all the time for about a year after John died, and my friend was right. That helped. He still does, when I need him to be with me. I say, “You have no idea how much your daughter misses you.”

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