There’s a story about big little things I’ve been wanting to tell. It’s about my dad and one of his peculiarities with which I had a hard time during his years on earth. And it’s a story with such an odd little ending that it is simply beyond coincidence.
I didn’t have any motivation to tell this story on one particular day or another, though in the last 24 hours three very specific things happened that made me think of my dad. And it was in taking a deep breath about his not being here now that I suddenly realized today is the 6-month anniversary of his death.
Being one who likes cycles, especially the natural kind, I felt tonight was as good night as any to tell this story.
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My dad had a tendency to bring presents… as in I don’t think I ever went to his office or he came to my house in which he didn’t offer to give me something. He was like this with everyone. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? So thoughtful.
Except, it really wasn’t. Well, not most of the time. These presents were often things like a book about how to market your business using Google, written in 2002 and given to me in 2012 (completely useless); or a half bag of baby spinach greens (with a significant portion of the leaves already going bad); or a self-help audiobook he thought I might like, so he copied it on CD (but one or more of the CDs in the series was missing.)
It’s not that he never gave me any-Thing that wasn’t something I actually wanted, but the ratio was way off: easily 80% “gah, no thanks!” to 20% “sure, yeah, thanks, dad” stuff. It was very frustrating because he’d get upset that I didn’t want the half bag of spoiled greens, or seven out of ten CDs in an audiobook about a subject I didn’t express interest in, or a business book that was so outdated as to be more trash than treasure. And I’d get frustrated because I felt like I was his dumping ground for miscellany he no longer wanted, or I was expected to want something because he brought it to me.
So, I wasn’t the least bit surprised when one day (in what were to become the last few weeks of his life) he gave me a thing. The thing was a 2.5 oz. 3-in-1 brand Lock Dry Lube can.
Mind you, I hadn’t asked for this, we hadn’t talked about it prior, there wasn’t a thing I had mentioned to him that indicated I might need this thing. But there you have it: he handed me the can one day when I had just picked him up to go to our now-weekly sound meditations.
As he handed me the can, he realized that the little red tube the manufacturer taped to the can–a tube to be attached to the nozzle so that the graphite spray would be targeted and directed down the tube rather than sprayed wide and far–was missing. He told me he’d find it and get it to me later.
Mind you, this is my lifelong- and not-terribly-organized-hoarder father talking. Right. You’re gonna find a little red tube among the tens of thousands of small and disorganized items and pieces of trash in your house, home, car or wherever. OK.
But I didn’t say that. I said, “thank you,” and put the can in the side pocket of my car door and forgot about it. Well, I couldn’t totally forget about it because there was this little rollerball inside the can (I guess to help mix up the contents), and the roller ball would often roll around and make sounds when I’d turn corners or stop my car.
For whatever reason, I kept the can in my car.
OK, now there’s a BIG chunk of this story that I’m just gonna call The Process. And The Process is how we got from a house, an office and seven storage units of a hoarder’s possessions to a state of organization. The Process was followed by The Great Gifting (an actual event) at which we gave away to friends who came by any and all possessions that had made it through The Process: mostly tools and hardware, books and music, supplements and health products, and office supplies.
The hardware and tools went the quickest and were practically cleaned out in the first hours of the Great Gifting, and definitely by the end of the first day. The other items were taken, too, but not quite with the same speed. We had a second Great Gifting event to offer more opportunities for people to receive from this bounty.
In days that followed, family and friends came by in bits and took items until all that was left of the once-robust hardware and tools was one small box on one forlorn table with sad little items on it, e.g. a single washer, a drill bit, some strange piece of something that probably belonged with a hardware item already taken, but who was I to know for sure.
AND THERE IT WAS: the little red tube!
After two dumpsters had been completely filled from his home, along with a 25-foot truck filled with sorted trash for the county dump, two 17-ft truck drop-offs at the thrift store, plus the many dumpsters used at his office and the storage units we cleaned out… After friends and family had happily carted off box loads of stuff, THERE IT WAS: the little red tube.
The odds. Oh, the odds.
So odd, or not?
