I was in high school when I had an odd encounter at my dentist’s office. I’d had my teeth cleaned, and I stopped at the receptionist’s desk to schedule my next appointment and confirm my insurance information, and to confirm that the remaining bill should go to my dad. There was an older lady there who was checking in, and she made a snarky remark about freeloaders sending bills to their parents! As a 15-year-old kid, I thought bill-to-the-parents was pretty appropriate, but I was so taken aback I was tongue-tied. I went home feeling disgruntled and offended, and vented to my mother about the weird encounter.

We had dinner guests that night—one of my mom’s law-school students (a retired Marine colonel) and his wife—and (having no interest in the grownup-guests) I hid unsociably in my bedroom until I had to come down for dinner. When I came down the stairs, I found myself face-to-face with the lady from the dentist’s office! It turns out she was the wife of the Marine-colonel student. It turns out she’d mistaken me for a college student. (Privately, I still thought her comments inappropriate—is it so out of line for college students to depend on parental support for health care? And even aside from questions of appropriateness, her comments were judgy and rude. I was not a fan.)

That was my introduction to Colonel Bob, but I quickly learned not to judge him by his wife. (His wife, in fact, was only around for a while longer—a change of which I approved, not that it was really my business.) Bob was—as you would expect from a Marine colonel—a forceful personality, but he had a sense of humor his wife had demonstrably lacked. He was smart and tough and interesting and funny.

He became more and more a part of the family, and he joined my mom’s law practice when he graduated law school. By the time I had my first kid, Bob merited honorary “grandparent” status.

There was the confusing matter, though, of the fact that he shared my dad’s name. “Grandpa Bob” was already taken—or so we thought. As it turned out, my son christened my dad as “Boboo”—and it stuck! By that time, though, Colonel Bob had gained a nickname of his own. He was a member of the volunteer fire department (being more fit than most men forty years his junior), and Christian was fascinated by fire engines. Whenever I took Christian to see my parents, “Firefighter Bob” would take him to the firehouse.

The two of them developed a relationship that expanded to fishing trips. Bob didn’t get to see his own grandson much, and he thoroughly adopted Christian. For that matter, he adopted me—never in any way that would overstep into my relationship with my actual dad, but Bob was like a “bonus dad.” Never more so than when my alcoholism crash-landed me into rehab.

My parents were on a Christmas cruise through the Panama canal when I imploded, and Bob was on his way to visit his actual daughter in California. He detoured instead to Boise, where I lived, and stayed up with me through a nightmare-night of withdrawal and angst while we waited for the rehab to open. I almost got turned away at the door, because I ‘d just gotten fired and had no insurance, and they required ten thousand dollars up front, which I surely didn’t have. Bob’s hand stopped me from turning back toward the door, and he handed over his credit card.

It’s not hyperbole to say that his generosity that day probably saved my life. I surely hadn’t managed to get Sober on my own attempts on the outside—and even if the rehab didn’t offer any “magic bullets” that I couldn’t have learned from A.A., it was the TIME there that I needed. The time without temptation, without having to fight the fight in my own head, the time to get clear-headed enough for A.A. to have a chance with me when I went back to the real world. (It wasn’t the absolute end of my drinking—I’ve fallen down on a number of occasions since. But it gave me what I needed to be Sober, and to get Sober again when I did fall down. It was the real start of my Recovery.)

A couple years ago I sent Bob a thank-you letter—for the many things, across the years, for which I had him to thank. I have to think God prompted me on that, because—although I hadn’t known he had cancer—he passed away just a few weeks later. I often haven’t gotten the right thing said at the right time—but I’m grateful that in this instance I did!