As my dad aged, the challenges of caring for him magnified for my mother. Navigating him between the porch and her car in the driveway exhausted her. Winters were awful. Parking in the garage was out of the question. For decades. Over the years my father, an Okie dust bowl farm boy, turned his garage into pharaoh’s tomb, cramming it full with everything imaginable. BecauseI might need it, he said.
One summer I flew home to visit for a few days. Mom said, “I need you to clean out your father’s garage.” Years passed since my dad worked in it. The last tools he touched were right where he left them. My dad’s favorite hammer, the large black swivel vice, Folgers Coffee cans, his handwritten scrawls, the elk horn and mesquite handles he crafted for his tools, the collection of miniature wrenches. These objects, like skeleton keys, unlocked many old memories. Mom should have called an archeologist to disentangle the layers.
How my dad animated everything in his garage! He made junk look good. Absent his energy and persistence, however, the overstuffed garage lost its glamor, its golden patina. I set about discarding the relics of his past and heaving out truckloads of junk at the city dump. Guilt stung me like hornets. I was a looter. After a few days, Mom drove her Cadillac into the strange new world of a clean garage, boldly going where no car had gone before in thirty years. She could get my father in and out of the car safely. She could bring the groceries in. Shift a wheelchair or walker, fair or foul weather alike.
Closing down Battleship Bob’s workshop signaled the end of an era. Perhaps more for me than anyone. Sometime later I gave my dad a gift. I finished the half-acre stone fence encircling the back of his property, acutely conscious that my handiwork would vanish one day too. Completing the fence proved a huge project, but for my dad who loved me and gifted me with his fatherhood over a lifetime, it was merely a thank you. I still see all these things in my heart, Dad, more clearly today than ever. Your son, Richard.
As my dad aged, the challenges of caring for him magnified for my mother. Navigating him between the porch and her car in the driveway exhausted her. Winters were awful. Parking in the garage was out of the question. For decades. Over the years my father, an Okie dust bowl farm boy, turned his garage into pharaoh’s tomb, cramming it full with everything imaginable. Because I might need it, he said.