Steve's Journey

Another significant death occurred during our years of house church. After my mother died in 1991, my dad and I were actually starting to get closer. Lois even convinced him that it was OK to hug his son, which he had never done before.

He visited often, and we included him on trips that we took. We kept up the tradition of the canasta games, and would often times help me with gathering and splitting firewood. I liked when he helped me, because he would tire easily and say, "Don't you think we need a coffee break?" I always jumped at the opportunity.

He seemed perfectly happy living alone, but would occasionally talk of the need for female companionship. He actually had proclaimed it before my mom's funeral. Almost a year following my mother's death, he got his wish. M--l was a thin, fairly attractive woman, around my dad's age. When we first met her, Lois and I both felt an eerie similarity between her and my mother. But after getting to know her, the similarity ended.

M--l had just finished off an engagement when she met my dad, because her fiance had died suddenly. My aunt dubbed her the black widow of that town. I knew she wasn't after my dad's money, because he didn't have any. They went on weekly dates, and he would drive his old car a half hour to pick her up each time. She rarely came to his place.

They had made an agreement in the beginning to not let their relationship interfere with their individual families. Holidays and family gatherings would be celebrated apart from each other. Any time we visited my dad, he would annoyingly ask when we were planning to leave. "...not rushing you, I just wanted to work our visit in with my plans with M--l." I sometimes would respond with, "Well, we can leave right away. We don't want to get in the way of your plans." I'm not proud of those responses. As I've said before, for years I have acted like an idiot, off and on.

As their relationship grew, he would tell us more and more about her family. Occasionally, we would be pressed into meeting her daughter or a grandchild. My dad hinted at marriage. I told him that he didn't need my permission and that he should understand that she could never replace my mother. So each year we expected to hear from him that they were married. This lasted for a little over nine years. No marriage; just friends. We suspected, and confirmed after his death, that they were more than just friends.

One Labor Day weekend he came to visit us. He announced that he would have to renege on his original agreement with M--l. He really liked being with her family and would, this year, prefer to spend Thanksgiving with them. I calmly replied that if he would rather not be with us, then it would be best if he didn't come. The rest of the visit was normal and pleasant, and nothing more was said about his promise to M--l to spend the next holiday with them.

He was unable to keep that promise.