Remembering

I was looking up various relatives from my birth family last night. It's something I do every now and then, when I'm not feeling bad enough. I used to do stuff like this when I was drinking. I miss alcohol. I somehow stumbled across an obituary for my step dad. He died just this past June. It didn't say what was the cause, just that he had been battling a long illness. My mom married my step dad when I was eight. I was living with my grandparents at the time, and my mom just showed up one day telling me she was getting married, and we were all going to live together. I didn't want to go and meet this new man. I wanted to stay with my grandparents. My step dad was Ukrainian, and his parents weren't happy he was marrying an American. Especially one like my mom. They were both highly educated, as was my step dad, and my mom was a single mom, vegetarian free spirit. I remember when we would go for dinner at his parents house they would only talk to him in their language. It was super awkward for my mom and I. She must have really loved him though, because it wasn't like her to tolerate things like that. When they got married, it was Catholic orthodox wedding, and the ceremony was like three or four hours long!
My step dad never tried to be my dad, just a person. He sometimes would try to soften some of the blows that came from my mom. My mom loved telling me how ugly I was. She loved to pick apart what was wrong with me, and he would sometimes sit me down after one of her rants and tell me that I was pretty and that I should always believe that. I don't really know if he ever talked to her about how she treated me. If he did, she didn't listen.
He and my mom had a baby, and for whatever reason my mom adored her baby with him. She was everything my mom wanted in a daughter. My step dad never made me feel like less of a part of the family.
I wasn't mentioned in the obituary of course. It's very strange to see yourself written out of your own history. It's not as cool as they make it seem in the movies. Anyway, I just thought I would in my own tiny way acknowledge that someone who had an impact in my life passed.
I'm sorry I never got a chance to thank you for trying to sooth some of my hurt feelings.