Why, Dad?

What do a stack of cafeteria trays, a wooden waterbed frame from the ’80s, and a cannon ball all have in common?

My dad.

I recently spent five days emptying his garage and two storage sheds so we could get the house ready to sell. It was crazy. He had an entire bucket full of magnets, at least a dozen shovels, a crate of grease canisters, and a rack of chainsaw blades arranged by their “sharpness” level. There were boxes of baler twine and an old Mickey Mouse corded phone. He also had a large and very heavy cabinet whose drawers once housed the local library’s entire Dewey Decimal System but had since been repurposed to store bolts, nuts, pocketknives, multi-tools, and other things smaller than 3x5x15 inches.

So. Many. Other. Things.

Things I didn’t even know were things. Like belt buckles with secret money compartments. And decorative clips for shirt collars. And an illustrated pamphlet titled, “Presbyterians and Mormons: A Study in Contrasts.” And an electric hand-held bone saw. I’m pretty sure these were all unrelated.

By the end of the week, I’d hauled three large utility trailers’ worth of stuff to nearby charitable organizations and two more to a landfill/recycling center. I’d also disposed of several active hornets’ nests, a legion of hobo spiders, and the carcass of one very unlucky bird.

And not once during any of these grueling dawn-to-dusk efforts did my dad offer to help.

Some of you may argue my expectations were unreasonably high given my dad’s age and the fact he died three years ago. But if God exists and is indeed compassionate, I believe He should’ve at least given my dad a day pass to come down and apologize for leaving all this behind.

To be fair, the week didn’t entirely suck. There were a few early highlights, like when I found the necklace he’d made from the tooth of a pet black bear he had as a kid. And when I rediscovered the coin collection we’d started together 50 years ago. And when I caught my dog licking the inside of a decorative whiskey decanter. But the more items I exhumed and the more time I spent inhaling toxins from moldering bags of pesticides, the more I started looking to the heavens and asking, “Why, Dad? Why did you have a barrel filled with garden hoses? And another filled with electrical cords? And why, Dad, did you have so many rustic oil cans? AND WHY DID YOU HAVE A BONE SAW?”

My mom, bless her, slid one of the many folding chairs into the middle of the garage so she could provide advice and moral support. Whenever tempers (mine) began to flare, she’d lovingly remind me to stay focused on the only thing in life that mattered that week: to lift with my legs and not my back.

It’s hard to say exactly how much this helped since I still ended up sore. Honestly, though, it was probably unavoidable. There was simply more to move than anyone (aside from my dad) could’ve imagined. I think it’s because he kept everything so organized. Like Smaug, the dragon from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, my dad spent equal amounts of time growing and grooming his hoard. For example, he had somehow amassed most of the world’s socket wrenches – metric, imperial, standard, deep, impact, shank, swivel, star, impact, you name the type and he’d have several – and had them all neatly grouped inside of trays which were inside of toolboxes which were inside of chests which were inside the garage. Next to them were layers upon layers of other treasures, all mentally tagged and categorized by my dad for some grand future use.

But then he unexpectedly ran out of future.

Like we all do.

That’s why I’m only buying digital assets from this point forward. Then, when I die, my kids will just need to log on to my cloud storage account, select all the files, and press delete.

No heavy lifting involved!

Oh, sure, there might be a few small remnants left behind. Like my physics and calculus books from college, which I’m still planning to read. And a few dozen bicycle tubes in the garage that’ll be perfectly good once they’re patched. And my collection of cast-iron tea kettles which should be doled out according to my will. And there’s a good chance I’ll still have the ginormous glass cage that once housed our 14-foot pet python. It’ll never fit through the door so will need to be removed from my office in small pieces.

When my kids ask, tell them that’s why I have a bone saw.