Experiences like that, that for a brief moment evoke a loved one that's gone are something to be cherished for sure.
It happens to me too. Every so often I cross paths with something that brings back one of the people that mentored me that passed far too soon and for a moment, it's like they're sitting a few feet away gently giving their pointers or making a joke about the situation that also contained some sage advice based on their own long experience, then it's over just as fast as it's happened and I'm by myself again. The quiet with the rustling whirring of a motor generator set running gets me that way; I'll have to show you pictures of one of my repair jobs some time that I wish my friend could've seen.
I never had a mentor. What I learned was through personal experience. And the accomplishments were for personal satisfaction only. I've even had individuals (guess) who would try to discourage what I did. Claimed it took time away from them. Which is why I was essentially inactive in the hobby for many years.
Current Lady doesn't completely understand what I do but she appreciates it and encourages it. When I happen to mention to her that I'm stuck fixing something she always states "I know you. You won't give up until you fix it". And when I mention at a later date that I did fix it her response is "I knew you would". That's all the mentoring I need. 
I know what it's like to get cut apart over your interests for sure. I was the black sheep of the family. Maybe I still am, I'm not sure. Anyways, I never had a mentor for electronics either. Same with computers so I ended up learning both on my own when I was a teenager from books and what little there was on the internet back then. The unfortunate thing, when you're young and you don't have the experience with life yet to know that this isn't true, when all you hear out of the public education system and your family is that you're an incapable retard that's never going to go anywhere in life for years and years, you end up believing it and can't see a way out.
I found out pretty quickly that it's impossible to get a real job here without having an incredible in or the on paper credentials; I never had the luck of finding an employer willing to take a chance on someone unproven so I was stuck living at my parents house while I worked in a dead end job. Meanwhile, one of my best friends who lives in Pennsylvania was unhappy with his job and went back to school taking electrical engineering as a mature student at one of the Penn State satellite campuses and we'd speak on the phone regularly and shoot the breeze about the course material or whenever one of us would visit the other. I'd give tips and advice about things like amplifier circuits, C and assembly programming, electric machines and power stuff, etc. as it came up. There was one truly satisfying phone call one evening that went along the lines of "I was the only person in the class that could answer this question today and it was because you gave me the background on it".
One of our friends, Bob who was involved in some of the same non-profit groups that both of us were, the guy who ended up mentoring me, started to get on my case about the mismatch he observed between what I could do and what I was doing living at home and working in the dead end job. I was starting to question on my own why I couldn't do electronics or electrical engineering post-secondary if I was keeping up fine with most of the material my friend's program at Penn State without having the benefit of going to class or the labs or have the books. For some reason, I thought there must have been this inaccessible layer of content at the college or university level that I wasn't even aware of much less capable of handling and it was becoming clear that this wasn't the case.
Bob was one of the main people who pushed me to go back to school myself as a mature student and go for it, and I signed up to do a three year advanced diploma at one of the community colleges; even as a mature student, my high school grades still ruled out university. My family wasn't happy about it though and there was a lot that was said and done about how I was just going to screw this up and drop out so they weren't going to help out with any of it etc. etc. etc. My parents spent the entire thanksgiving dinner when I was in first year slagging me to the whole extended family that way. Six weeks later, first semester was winding down, and I had been tracking my grades throughout the whole thing and I was pretty sure I would be on the honour roll unless I somehow blew the final exams. I waited several days into the Christmas holidays and logged into the college's system and sure enough, there it was, and a hard copy of the honour roll letter arrived in the mail a couple days after that. Needless to say, my parents were NOT happy about this and they told me not to tell anybody in the family at Christmas. Embarrassment being a fate worse than death and being shown up like that less than two months after slagging me to the whole extended family about how they thought I was going to screw up at college. Well, I was proud of being on the honour roll, so I told everyone. It was priceless seeing my parents staring daggers and spitting nails about how nice this was and trying to say things to the effect that it was some kind of aberration that they weren't expecting.
This happened each semester the rest of the way for college and it turned into a standing joke with Bob and a coupe of other friends. "Still on the honour roll?" "Yes." "You're parents must be furious." "Yes." They only started to come on side near the end when they realized it was turning into a job via a co-op placement that was going to let me afford to move out of the house but that's the only reason why my family stopped tearing strips out of me for doing electronics.
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