Three Years Later: What My Father's Workshop Finally Taught Me

It has been three years since my father died. Two and a half since I first walked into his workshop and stood there, stunned by the sheer volume of stuff he had accumulated over a lifetime.

I thought I would have it cleaned out by now.

I was wrong.

What I Thought This Would Be

When I started this process, I figured it would take a few months. Maybe a year if I really dragged my feet. Sort the tools from the junk. Keep what mattered. Trash the rest. Simple.

Turns out there is nothing simple about dismantling a man's life one socket wrench at a time. Fifty-eight trips to the dump and recycling yard later, I am still at it.

Fifty-eight.

Let that sink in for a minute.

The last trip netted eleven dollars in recycling money. I added it to my mom's recycling fortune. She is going to be rich at this rate. In about three hundred years.

The Field

I remember the day he left.

He walked my older brother and me across a field by the house to explain. Said we would be better off with our mother.

I grabbed his leg and begged him to let me stay with him.

Why I have no idea. Perhaps because a young boy figures he needs his father. Perhaps because I did not understand what was happening. Perhaps because even then I knew something was breaking that would never be fixed.

Thank heavens Dad was wise enough to know my brother and I would indeed be better off with our mom.

She was a rock. Her primary focus was making sure her two boys were cared for and provided for.

Oh, and she talked.

That matters more than I knew how to appreciate back then.

The Ambush of Memory

Every box I open feels like an ambush. I will be going through perfectly normal items. Screwdrivers, extension cords, things that make sense. And then I will find something that stops me cold. A handwritten note. A photograph tucked into a toolbox. A piece of machinery I have never seen before but that he clearly thought was important enough to save.

And then I am not cleaning anymore. I am standing still in the middle of his shop, holding something I do not understand, trying to figure out why it mattered to him.

The same way I spent years trying to figure out why he left us. And why he came back five years later. And why he never explained any of it.

The Questions He Would Not Answer

I tried. God knows I tried.

As I got older, more curious, I would ask him questions. About his life. About why he did the things he did. But there was one question that mattered more than all the others.

Why did you leave? Why did you walk us across that field and tell us we would be better off without you? And why did you come back five years later?

He would give me nothing. One-word answers. Shrugs. A change of subject so smooth you almost did not notice he had done it. Then he would turn and go about the business of whatever we were doing. Chopping wood. Pretending to clean his shop. Mending a fence.

Roofing a home. Anything to avoid answering.

I wanted to know him. Wanted to understand what made a man leave his family and then return as if those five years had not happened. As if we were all supposed to just move forward and pretend everything was fine.

He never answered. Not once. Not in any way that mattered.

And now he never will.

The Things I Still Cannot Throw Away

I found his Leatherman again the other day. I had forgotten I wrote about it two and a half years ago. It is still in the same worn case. Still in perfect working condition. I saved it. Put it in a drawer somewhere safe.

I do not carry it. I thought I would. Thought having it with me would make me feel connected to him somehow. But the truth is, I was never that connected to him when he was alive. Carrying his tool is not going to change that now.

The bee smoker is still here too. So is the beekeeper's head net. I have no use for either. I am not going to take up beekeeping. But I cannot get rid of them because they belonged to my great-grandfather House, and my father kept them, and now they are mine to figure out.

Just like I am still trying to figure out who my father actually was. And why he could not stay. And why he came back. And why he refused to talk about any of it.

Thirteen toilets are gone, though. I did manage that. Somewhere in those fifty-eight trips. Along with more scrap metal, broken tools, rusted parts, and more mystery objects than I can count.

Eleven dollars. That is what the last load was worth.

What the Clutter Tells Me

Three years later, surrounded by what is left of his stuff, I think I am starting to understand.

All of this. The tools he never used. The parts that do not go to anything. The thirteen toilets I had to haul away. The bee smoker from a grandfather he barely knew. The fifty-eight trips it has taken to make a noticeable dent.

It was all easier than talking.

Easier to hold onto things than to deal with whatever he was feeling. Easier to bury it under layers of clutter than to face it. Easier to keep adding to the pile and pretend everything was fine.

The workshop was not just full of junk. It was full of things he could not say. Emotions he would not deal with. Conversations he refused to have.

He kept it all bottled up. Quiet. Unable to talk. Just like the objects surrounding him.

He walked us across that field. Said we would be better off with our mother. He was right about that. But he never explained why he left. And he never explained why he came back five years later.

And then he filled a workshop with things that could not talk either.

The Woman Who Talked

My mom was a rock.

While Dad was gone, she made sure my brother and I were cared for. Provided for. She showed up. She did the work. She held it together. She sacrificed.

And she talked. She answered questions. She explained things. She was there in a way he never was, even after he came back.

I think about that now, hauling his stuff to the dump. Adding eleven dollars to her recycling fortune. The irony is not lost on me.

She was the one who stayed. The one who talked. The one who raised us.

And here I am, three years later, still trying to figure out a man who could not do any of those things. While finally learning to talk with the mother who always could.

Apple doesn't fall far huh?

How He Is Fading

Here is the part that is odd to me.

I can barely remember his voice anymore. The sound of it. The way he said my name.

I remember what he looked like. The way he moved. The tools he used and the way he held them. The way he would turn away from a hard question and pick up an axe or a hammer and disappear into work.

I remember grabbing his leg in that field. Begging him to let me stay. Not understanding that he was right. That we would be better off without him.

But the man himself is fading.

And I am realizing that I never really knew him to begin with.

He left when I was a kid. Came back five years later. We lived in a different house after that. Shared meals. Worked on projects together. Chopped wood. Mended fences. Pretended to clean his shop.

But we never talked. Not really. He made sure of that.

So now I am left with a workshop that has required fifty-eight trips to clear and few treasured memories of him as a person. Just fragments. Impressions. The shape of a man who walked away and then returned without ever explaining why.

What I Wish I Had Known

If I could go back and tell myself something two and a half years ago, it would be this: You are not going to find the answer in here.

I kept thinking that if I went through enough boxes, sorted through enough tools, hauled enough scrap metal to the recycling yard, I would uncover some truth about who he was. Some hidden piece of him that would explain why he left. Why he came back. Why he refused to talk about any of it.

But all I have found is more clutter. More evidence that he was a man who could not face his own life, so he buried it under stuff and silence.

Fifty-eight trips worth of evidence.

I wish I had pushed harder. Demanded answers. Refused to accept the shrug and the turned back and the sudden need to fix something that was not broken.

But I did not. And now it is too late.

Why I Am Sharing This

If you are going through something similar, cleaning out a parent's house, a garage, a storage unit full of someone else's life, I want you to know something.

It might take longer than you ever imagined. Fifty-eight trips longer. Maybe more.

You might not find what you are looking for.

You might spend years sorting through their things, hoping it will bring you closer to them, and realize they are still just as distant as they always were.

You might discover that the parent you lost was never fully there to begin with. That they carried things they would not talk about. That they walked you across a field one day and left. And came back five years later. And never once explained why.

And that is okay to admit.

Not every parent-child relationship is close. Not every father opens up. Not every loss comes with a tidy collection of warm memories to hold onto.

Sometimes all you get is a workshop that takes fifty-eight trips to clear, eleven dollars in recycling money, and unanswered questions that will never be answered.

Sometimes the parent who stayed and talked is the one who deserved your gratitude all along.

The Leatherman in the Drawer

As I said earlier, his Leatherman is in a drawer somewhere. Safe. Preserved.

I do not look at it. Do not carry it. Do not feel connected to him when I think about it.

But I cannot throw it away either.

Because that is all I have. Objects. Things. Pieces of a man who walked my brother and me across a field, said we would be better off without him, and turned out to be right.

Maybe that is what all of this has been about. Trying to hold onto someone who was never really there to begin with. Trying to understand a man who refused, or simply didn't know how to be understood.

Three years later, fifty-eight trips later, I am still trying to let go.

Not just of his things.

But of the hope that I will ever get the answers I wanted.