We were finally able to have a memorial event for Steve that was worthy of him and a true celebration of his life. I have been struggling with what to call this because party is not the right word, but there are few things my husband Steve loved more than a giant party.

It was hard to find a word that adequately expressed the devastation that we’re dealing with and yet honored the amazing man that he was. I still don’t know what to call it and I’d spent the week before the event cringing every time someone said “have a good time.” I just know that the gathering that we had hit all the right notes and I feel like he would have been satisfied with the outcome.

In addition to paying tribute to Steve, my only other goal for the day was to make sure that my kids understood how much their father was loved and appreciated by everyone in his life. I hoped that they would maybe find some peace in hearing story after story about the outrageous and fun things their dad did and hearing from the people whose lives he changed for the better. What I didn’t count on was how much I needed to hear those stories and feel the closeness of that community, too.

I’d heard many of the stories before, even witnessed many of them. Very few things I heard about Steve during the event were a surprise to me; however, something that has come up quite a few times in letters I received from people, and I heard echoed again in some stories from his former co-workers, was how strongly Steve believed in second chances.

Over the course of his careers, Steve managed many people. Having been his actual co-worker when we were 15 and working as lifeguards and being his main co-worker on all of our home projects, I knew that working with Steve could be both an adventure and sometimes, a real pain.

I was surprised, and yet not so surprised, the more I thought about it, to hear from co-workers that had faced personal challenges while they worked for Steve. Divorces, substance abuse, illnesses, all sort of things impacted their ability to do their job to the level that Steve expected.

Almost every letter or conversation started with, “any other boss would have fired me.” Instead, Steve not only worked with them to keep their jobs, he helped steer them to the right services, whether it was counseling or otherwise, to help with whatever was plaguing them. Steve never mentioned a word to me about any of this. First of all, he respected these individuals’ privacy. Secondly, knowing Steve, he wouldn’t have felt there was anything to say. He was simply doing the right thing.

One of the other common threads in the stories that his friends shared was that the most exciting times with Steve were when things didn’t go right the first time. One friend shared a story of a turkey hunt that lasted almost a week. On the final morning, the friend had had enough and didn’t bother dragging himself out of bed to go with Steve. A few hours later, Steve stomped through his house, victorious, with the bloody bird held high. Over and over again, dogged determination and perseverance were themes in Steve’s life. I realized as I was listening to these tales that that was what made them so interesting and entertaining.

Steve was a good hunter, an all-around outdoorsman, proficient in trapping, fishing, mushroom hunting, you name it. But, so are many other people. The things that set Steve apart were his ability to push the limits to get what he wanted and his ability to tell a great story after he’d had success. Or, at least to make failure sound like a great adventure, too.

The day after his event, I found myself with not one but two broken lawn mowers, and my second flat tire in a week. This was after that little devil Henson had mysteriously disappeared for three hours the night before, while I was trying to pack up the car and get everything ready. It had been a grueling and emotional 36 hours and yet, I didn’t feel myself getting mad or getting ready for a teary breakdown.

Instead, I called the small engine repair guy and made an appointment to have the riding mower fixed. After consulting with A and determining that the push mower had been cantankerous for years, I decided that the time for messing with it was over. Later that night, as I finished mowing by the headlights of my shiny new mower, I felt relieved. It hadn’t been a smooth day, but it had been an interesting one, and in the end, it all worked out.

“Life’s a journey, not a destination” belongs on a bumper sticker somewhere, but as I thought back to some of the speed bumps that Steve and I had hit over the years, I also remembered his initial reaction being much different from the stories he told about them later. Steve always managed to find the good in people, and make the best of bad situations. If he couldn’t, he just kept on plugging away until he fixed them.

So often over the last few months, I’ve only been able to get out of bed because I told myself I had to because that is what Steve would want. In my head, I wanted to believe that, but I would counter that with, “well, what Steve would really want is to be here with us.”

Somehow, now, that voice has been quieted a little bit, and the road map that Steve left for us has become clearer.

He may have gotten to the destination a lot more quickly than he should have, but the journey that he took to get there was a full and rich one, that has left us all with incredible memories and enough joy and adventure to keep going on ours.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.