Piece of You

Three years ago, I called my dad asking for his advice on floating shelves. My sisters and I had a tendency to do this when we were hinting to him that we “wanted” something. His response was, “I suppose you want these yesterday”. He knew how impatient I was on my ideas. My dad loaded up his table saw, what seemed like a million tools, and headed to Indiana within a week or two. If there is one thing about my dad — he was a perfectionist. He didn’t do anything halfway when he set his mind to it. He asked me the dimensions I wanted on this shelf and when I told him he tried to talk me out of it and said I will hate them that small. I told him he was crazy. He made the shelf that day while I was at work and I came home and he said “I only made one because it’s too small”. He was right, it was way too small. He read it on my face as soon as I looked at it. So he walked out to the garage and began making two more for me. He made them perfectly, he hung them and I’m pretty sure if our house was knocked down, these shelves would have been completely untouched and unharmed. The part of the story I wish I could unfeel was my dad holding his side the entire time he was here and him wincing in pain frequently. I wish I could unfeel the part where he couldn’t leave the house and go do “our favorite” things together because he didn’t feel well. I ended up asking my dad to leave that trip, I told him he was going to the emergency room here or home but he wasn’t allowed to stay at my house if he wouldn’t see a doctor. I wish I could unfeel the feeling as he pulled out of my driveway that day. That was his last trip to Indiana. These are his last things he built for me. They have been weighing on my heart that I haven’t hung them yet in our new home but today five days before the third anniversary of his death they are hung and they are beautiful and a piece of him will be next to me as I pray for him nightly to watch over my family. I hope to never forget these stories of him. He loved us more than life and would jump in his truck to make our ideas happen. He loved to help us and he loved when we were happy.

I hope I never forget the feeling as we stood back that day with his arm around me and looked at the shelves and tried for 30 minutes to try and decide if they were perfectly even on my wall. We giggled as we remeasured and decided they were perfection because they literally are. 💙