This past week marked yet another anniversary that I wish I didn’t have to remember: 10 years since my dad passed away. This year hit even harder because I’d always felt that having my dad for 39 years wasn’t nearly enough. That was almost an entire lifetime compared to what my 15-, 14- and 11-year-old got.

I’ve always said that one of the greatest gifts my dad gave me was teaching me how to live without him, and Steve and I had planned to do the same for our kids … someday. Neither of us, of course, had any intention of leaving them before they were fully formed adults.

Now everything has changed. Like it or not, my kids are facing every day for the rest of their lives without their dad, and with a mom who’s barely functional.

Steve isn’t going to be here to parent my kids into their 20s and 30s. Hopefully, I will be, but other than the few random conversations we had, I really have no idea how he would have dealt with our kids as adults.

I know there are those who say I am foolish to worry about years down the road, but sometimes when today is too overwhelming, I find a little peace imagining some future date when I’ve got it all figured out.

When I’m feeling particularly overwhelmed, there is one incident from my past that I like to play over in my head.

It might be one of the most important lessons my dad ever taught me, certainly one that I’ve needed these past few months.

A year after I landed my first real job, and had earned paid vacation time, I decided to spend the week in San Francisco, meeting up with an old college friend and seeing parts of the West Coast for the first time. My friend took a few days off to show me around the city and spend some time together, and then I rented a car (also a first for me) and planned to take a tour of Northern California on my own.

After spending the day in Yosemite, hiking and admiring the scenery, I planned to leave the park, drive to the Sequoia National Forest, get a hotel room for the night, and continue my sightseeing the next day. Just outside of the entrance to Yosemite, I stopped and filled up my tank with gas.

A few hours later, I stopped to get something to eat and discovered that I did not have my wallet. I clearly remembered paying for the gas with it. Suddenly, I had a mental image of me putting the wallet on the roof of the car while I messed with the unfamiliar gas cap. I did not remember retrieving it.

This was in the days before cellphones, so I had no choice but to find a pay phone and place a collect call home. Although they accepted my phone call, they couldn’t understand a word I was saying as I was carrying on hysterically.

As a parent, now, I can’t even imagine what it was like to sit there and listen to me, but at the same time, at least my dad knew that I was alive, if not necessarily well. The two awful phone calls that I’ve gotten both started with utter silence. I’ve instructed my kids to carry on like maniacs if they ever have to make a distress call to me.

Luckily, the gas station attendant was able to take a debit card number over the phone and was kind enough to give me the maximum cash back that he was allowed to distribute. This was also pre-9/11 so IDs weren’t quite as critical, and my plane ticket was in my suitcase, not my wallet. I did need an ID to pick up a cash advance, which would be a problem for the next day.

At the moment, Dad had figured out how to get me enough money to eat, get a cheap hotel room, and put enough gas in the car to get back to San Francisco.

The next day when I called to check in and figure out the next steps, Dad had some news for me. Someone had found my wallet, and was able to track him down using my ID, and although the cash was gone, my ID and credit cards were still in it. The only problem was that this guy was four hours away in the opposite direction. Again, this was before cellphones, so I can’t imagine what went through my dad’s head as he weighed the options of sending me off to meet a total stranger, who already knew I had no identification or any other information on me, or letting me head back to San Francisco where I had no money or no ID.

Honestly, I don’t remember much of how the rest of it played out. I did meet up with the man who found the wallet. He proved to be a straight shooter, gave me my wallet and even slipped me an extra $50 because that’s what he’d want someone to do for his kids, and by the next morning I was back in San Francisco, and more than ready to come home.

When I got home, the lecture of my life was waiting for me. Surprisingly, though, it wasn’t about being more careful when putting my wallet down, it was about how carrying on like a lunatic only exacerbates a bad situation and losing my cool didn’t help anything.

For years, that California trip was referenced any time I went to pieces in a situation where I shouldn’t have. Of course, Dad was right. It never helped, and usually only made things worse.

That particular story eventually became the stuff of family legend, and even had its own nickname, which happened to be very politically incorrect, and is no longer repeated. My dad made sure Steve knew this story, “just so he knew what he was getting into,” and for years, both of them would remind me when I was going “all San Francisco.”

It’s tempting to just forget about it, and to just give in to the moment and cry and babble incoherently, but there’s no one to place that collect call to anymore, and no one to decipher my ranting, so, instead I’ve just got to actually live the lesson I learned and figure out the best solution to the problem at hand.

Thanks, Dad. It’s been 10 years, and every day, the lessons you taught me get me through. I can only hope I manage to do the same for our kids.

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