The Box

Randy Travis had a great song out a few years ago. I have it on his greatest hits CD which I play in my car. The song is called THE BOX. It's a ballad about a man whose father just passed on and in the process of attending to his dad's things, he comes across a wooden box in his father's workshop. He carefully lifts the top off and in it, he finds personal momentoes of his dad's life...some things he is surprised to find...a poem the dad wrote about his wife and child; a long lost pocketknife the singer gave to his dad for father's day; postcards and pictures. The singer says, "we had all thought his heart was made of solid rock, but that was before we found the box."

I had heard the song before I went back home last week. I really wanted to find the opportunity to sit down with my dad and talk about "stuff". I did try...a little but it just didn't happen.

I had noticed a wirey fake flower wrapped around a button on my dad's shirt - obviously a gift from a fund raiser he apparently donated to - when I first arrived on Wednesday night. I noticed the flower again on Thursday. On Friday...I had to say something...you can't wear a shirt for three days...you just can't. I told him he needed to change his shirt, that he had worn it long enough. "You're wacky," he said to me. He has said this to me a lot over the years.

"There's a man at work. He's 82 years old. He told me he needs his wife to tell him when to take a shower because 'when you get his age, you need to be told'. He's 82 and still works." I told him this so he knew he wasn't alone; that his thinking was normal for a man of 75 and he shouldn't feel so bad. Dad left the room. I really thought he had taken my advice. A little while later, I saw him and that same wirey flower around the same button.

"Oh," I said. "I was hoping I didn't hurt your feelings."

He walked by me on his way to the basement. "I don't have any feelings anymore."

"When did you lose them?" I asked. He laughed and kept on going. The next day he changed his shirt.

I want my dad to write his thoughts down because if I ask him he doesn't know how to answer. It seemed like everything I asked him he answered with a question or some big prologue that was so unnecessary. I must have said 15 times last week, "Dad, please just answer the question." He kept thinking his answer wasn't what I wanted to hear but the reality is, it didn't matter to me what the answer was...I just wanted an answer. Example, he was going to drive me over to my friends house so, as we were leaving, I asked him, "Should I lock the door?" To which he replied, "What for?" "Dad, just answer the question. It doesn't matter to me if it is locked or not, I just want to know what do you normally do when you leave." (They live in a small village outside of Buffalo, NY. There is a crime rate but not a high one and locking the doors when I was a kid was an option but not mandatory. I haven't lived there in twenty years so what do I know?)

I might have to wait to find "the box." I just don't know if that's the best thing.