My sister found two boxes in the top drawer of Dad’s dressing while she was searching for things he’d instructed her to give to different people after he was gone. I think they once belonged to his dad’s youngest sister, Teresa. One of the boxes is an old wooden hinged thing that handkerchiefs had come in and on the inside is inscribed in pen her name and the date, Christmas 1910. She would have been about nine years old. The other box is a bit more exotic as it once held tea bags and I need to send it back to DNOS when I am through writing about it.

There were all sorts of memories in those two boxes. Postcards Dad and his younger brother, Jimmy, had sent their parents back in ’48 or ’49 while they were on a road trip out West, strings and a bridge from his violin. There was a rock I had found and painted with his nickname on it. I think I gave it to him as a paperweight for Father’s Day when I was 11 or so, and a picture of DNOS, myself and our cousin from a photobooth at the mall. Other things too which I need to write about but not today.

I love this Randy Travis tune and I think it fits the moment.

On the top shelf in the closet,
In the workshop where he spent his extra time
Was a dusty wooden box that I had never noticed ’til that time
And we set on the table and carefully we opened up the top
And stared into the memory
Daddy kept inside the box

There was a letter from mamma when she went out to Reno
To help her sister out in 62
And a flower from Hawaii when they went on vacation
It was the first time that my Daddy ever flew

And the pocket knife I gave to him on Fathers day
Years ago I thought it had been lost
We all thought his heart was made of solid rock
But that was long before we found the box

I guess we always knew it but “I love you” was hard for him to say
Some men show it easy and some just never seem to find the way
But that night I began to see the softer side of someone I had lost
I saw the love he kept inside the first time that we opened up the box

There was a picture that was taken when he and Mom were datin’
Standing by his 1944 and a faded leather Bible he got when he was baptised
I guess no one understood him like the Lord

And the poem that he had written about his wife and children
The tender words he wrote were quite a shock

We all thought his heart was made of solid rock
But that was long before we found the box
We all thought his heart was made of solid rock
But that was long before we found the box