I have never been into westerns. My brothers and I didn’t play cowboys and Indians growing up. I wasn’t a fan of the lone ranger or his buddy tonto. The first cowboy anything I ever watched on t.v was the movie young guns. The second one was young guns 2. My wife on the other hand loves them. She’s from Washington state and every Saturday I hear john wayne, Clint eastwood, or some other cowboy in a shootout of epic proportions. I immediately go to the other room and start working on my blog.

About eleven years ago I met my first real life cowboy. His eyes cut into a squint when he talked, he could obviously handle himself, and he had that talking out of the side of his mouth thing down pact. Fortunately for me the only things he didn’t possess was a ten gallon hat and more importantly a gun. The latter was important because I was just about to ask him for his blessing to marry his daughter.

We were standing about ten paces from each other, and as he told me how bad the rooster pecked at all the other chickens butts I prepared myself to say one of the hardest sentences I’ve had to say since yesterday morning.

This past Friday morning I sat on the phone at seven a.m as the nurse told me the worst news I’ve had in a very long time. The only cowboy I loved had passed away. I had to look my wife in the eye and tell her that her dad just passed away.

When I first met steve mitchell I had no idea what to expect. My wife (girlfriend at the time) would tell me about all the similarities we had and I would just scratch my head and ask how? I’m a black guy from NJ whose about two teenagers younger than the cowboy she was comparing me to. At that time me and melissa use to watch the movie meet the parents about three times a week. When we both decided that it was time for me to meet her parents I thought art would imitate life and I would be Greg Focker for three painful days.

To my surprise it was nothing like the movie at all, well besides me having to say the prayer at the dinner table, making two of her little cousins cry, oh and thanking god for the weather during the prayer when it was twenty degrees outside and of course raining. But outside of that steve and I  had a lot in common. We both loved basketball, boxing, chocolate cake and of course  his daughter, and we both hated long lines, ignorant people, etc etc.

For the first three years after I met him he asked melissa about her”friend”. The one who stayed with her parents and she was dating for about four years. It still makes me laugh because if I had a daughter I would call her boyfriend the same thing, actually maybe a little worse.

I’m not a cryer. Its not because I’m ignorant and think it’s not manly or anything like that. It has a lot to do with the way I was brought up. My mom never cried and I saw her go through so much so I adopted that mindset. I would always be strong no matter what the case. Yesterday as we talked to her mom on speaker tears started rolling down my eyes. It hit me unexpectedly, because the whole day I was doing my best to be there for melissa. A week earlier I was alone in our computer room and the same thing happened. I thought i was out of tears but you never know how much someone means to you until they’re gone.

Two years ago I got a text from steve that said something like “hey buddy just wanted you to know you can call me dad but only if you want to.” he saw a text message I sent to his wife calling her mom and got jealous. I’m smiling as I right this because I never thought I would  call another man dad in my life, especially not a cowboy. Rest in peace dad.