My Trash Dad

“Hey, I think this is the last time you’ll have to move me into the ground,” my father said, waiting for my eye contact before finishing the joke, “Or maybe the second to last time. Ha ha ha!”

“I’ll move you wherever you want, dad. You want the master? Seriously, I can sleep down here no problem, I like basements.”

“No, no, no.”

He was right, though, I never had to put him into the ground besides that in-law suite. I had long wondered if he would find a way to get out of it. Out of the ground, that is. In fact I knew he would cook something up, even if I didn’t know what it would be exactly. Fortunately he wrote it out for me.

A card on his bedside table. “Son — I brought you into this world. Could you keep me in it?”

The contents of the card looked sort of like the Ikea furniture directions that years ago he watched me work through as we furnished my basement for his move-in. We really enjoyed building that Ikea furniture, like, we had so much fun it was surreal. There was something about our dynamic in those final years that clicked. It was like we were finally ready for the father-son thing.

After the furniture we took up gardening. Then a bit of woodworking, and so on. Well, it was me who made the stuff while my dad sat by contributing verbally. He was like my Mr. Miyagi except my dad never knew how to do the stuff — which was part of the fun, learning together. He was wise. I was patient. We were just a good team. Reading his card I realized that our team wasn’t down for the count, yet. He had enrolled us in a final challenge — not a karate tournament, though there would be some broken bones.

I don’t know when he thought of it. It could’ve been years ago. Which would explain why we picked up welding… I brewed enough coffee to last me the whole night, tip-toed to the basement so the wife and kids wouldn’t wake up. Then opened the card.

“Step 1: Gather materials. Refer to the pictures in the back.”

I felt behind the card, pulled out the pages marked with a tab labeled ‘Materials,’ and began to sift through a very organized catalogue of my father’s skeleton. He had plenty of medical problems at the end there, and shit if he didn’t save every one of his x-rays and annotate his every fucking dimension. I shook my head and laughed. Then reality caught up with me. I kept reading.

“Step 2: Match materials with blueprints.”

The cover of the Blueprints section was a picture of my dad’s favorite bench in the park across the street. It was both of our favorites. The highpoint on the hill — with the best view of the city buildings and the water behind them. Drawn in blue ink, next to the bench in the picture, there was a little rectangle with an arrow pointing to it labeled “Dad.” Turning the pages, I saw a full 3-D design of that rectangle, carefully measured out to the inch.

“Step 3: (Don’t be gentle, I’m already dead!) Make me into a trash can.”

The trash can’s base was roughly 5 by 5 ribs’ lengths. The height, about one arm’s length. I popped in my ear plugs. With my dad’s help I started taking apart my dad and piecing together my trash dad.

I didn’t think I would have enough time, but with two hours to spare before sunrise I had already nailed him firm in place next to the bench, thrown the rest of him in the trunk to drop off for cremation in the morning, and cleaned up any evidence in the workshop.

I sat on our bench for the next few hours. Laughing, crying, talking, occasionally looking to my right at my fucking rectangular father. “They FINALLY put a trash can here, it’s about time right?!”

When the sun came up and the light revealed our work, I knew we would get away with it. Trash dad looked pretty much like all the other wooden trash cans in the park. I spent one last long moment standing in place as the sun rose. Walked down the hill, didn’t look back at the bench. I’d see him soon enough.