MY FATHER'S TOOLS

My Dad passed away in March of 2021.  I can't believe that next March will be five years.  It seems like it wasn't that long ago, like the wound is still fresh, but it also feels like forever since I've seen him.

I have an idea for a song. It came from work my siblings and I began only a few weeks ago - clearing out my Dad's workshop. My Dad was a finishing carpenter and spent the last chunk of his career building furniture and turning wood on a lathe in his cherished workshop.

My Dad's workshop had not been touched since his death. It looked exactly the same as the day he left it. There were hand tools with little wood shavings caught in them, still on the workbench and placed by his hands. It was a bit of an unintentional shrine, the same way parents sometimes leave their kid's bedrooms exactly the same after they leave for college. Maybe we didn't touch anything because it helped us feel like Dad was closer in some way.

The top of an unfinished side table still locked in a vice gave witness to his last project. It felt wrong to take it out. Disturbing the chisels and planes on his workbench and packing them away felt like disrespecting holy objects on a sacred alter. At the same time it felt so good to hold something in my hands knowing the last person who held it was my Dad.

Through many hours over three days the question I kept asking myself was "What am I to do with my father's tools?' I learned rudimentary wood working skills from my Dad. My brother Matthew learned much more.  We decided the the tools would go to Matthew's house and a few would follow me to Lethbridge. 

We were all thrilled the tools would not be sold.  That seemed sacrilege. They meant so much to my father. They were more than the tools of his trade. They were the tools that brought out his creative side. They were the tools that worked out his life's frustrations. Working with wood brought him joy and comfort. His tools were more like friends. He knew them intimately. He could tell one chisel from another just by the way it was weighted and just by the way it sat in his hands or the way his fingers wrapped around it. In turn, those tools responded to my dad's hands in a way that was only for him.

My brother Matthew and I will try to honour my father's tools.  It won't be easy; in the same way a family member might receive a virtuoso's violin after they have passed. The recipient will cherish it and maybe even learn to play it, but it will never be played again the way the virtuoso played it.

So there's the line that will serve as the beginning of a future song - "What will I do with my father's tools?" I hope to get it written sometime during this residency and pay honour to my Dad with a new song.

The last song I wrote for my dad was called Young at Heart.  I wrote and played it for him a few days before he died on March 10, 2021.  Listen below.