Missing Dad's Garage

My Dad's garage was the stuff of legends.  It could easily fit two cars plus a ton of storage but after the first year or so of living in the house, cars were relegated to the outside as the garage slowly filled up with "useful" odds and ends.

amateur_photo_borevia photopin cc

My sister used to joke (long before Dad actually got sick) that the first thing she would do when she heard that Dad was dead was to run over to the house and burn the garage down so none of us had to deal with all the junk inside.

When Dad actually was dying, I spent some time trying to sort through the items in the garage and separate out the treasures from the trash (and there was an awful lot of both) in preparation for Mom's inevitable move to a smaller more manageable house.

The items I found included (but are by no means limited to)

• broken dishwashers
• numerous vacuum cleaners of various sorts and states of repair
• uncountable corded and cordless drills and parts pertaining to said drills
• bins and bins of screws, bolts, nails, and assorted jumbled hardware
• power tools, power tools, and more power tools
• oodles of lawn mowers and parts
• broken garbage disposals
• garage door openers both functioning and broken
• electrical bits and pieces of all shapes and sizes
• wood and metal scraps
• spring, casters, wheels, etc.
• gardening equipment of all sorts

And that list is barely scratching the surface.  Let's just say it was an epic yard sale.

You see, my Dad was very handy.  He could fix nearly anything and his favorite way to do so was using whatever odds and ends he had to hand.  Thankfully for him (and usually not so thankfully for the aesthetically pleasing value of the finished repair) he had an awful lot to hand.

In retrospect we can see that Dad was sick for years before the cancer diagnosis.  There were many years where he continued to collect odds and ends and throw broken items into the garage for the repairs he hoped to get to soon.

Trying to sort through the garage was not an easy task physically or emotionally and despite hours of work I didn't feel like I got very far.  It was hard to know that these items that had value to my Dad would have little value to others.

And now, as I prepare to move in to a house that needs some updating and creative storage options, I find myself longing for my Dad's garage.  I peruse DIY projects on pinterest and think, "I could easily have built this with supplies from the garage."  It will be painful to buy things like caster wheels that I could have had for free.

But much more painful is the longing for my Dad himself.  It is easy to buy new items from Home Depot, but there is no way to buy the conversations about home repair, fix ups, and creative problem solving that I wish I could have.

Garages and their contents can be replaced.  Dads can't.