The Key

It’s my second visit to Dad’s house, and the last day of this trip. My aunt and uncle are here threading through paper and kitchen items for the five days I’m here. I’ve coordinated a load of people to disperse my dad’s estate effectively. They include an auctioneer, a consignment guy who bought tools and other junk, my dad’s close friend in the electrical engineering field, Steve – the guy he trained to take his place after almost 40 years of specializing, the junk guys, Nick and Matt, who take everything away once everyone else is done, and Steve’s two helpers, George and Fred, who arrived a day after him because there was too much for his multiple loads yesterday.

Now it’s 3 pm on the last day. I fly out tomorrow morning early, and the last two groups of people are finishing up. The two engineering helpers, George and Fred, have loaded their Ford truck bed with heavy machinery, transformers and motors which have been ripped (gently) from their original purpose and now sit bare in boxes. Technical paperwork, and wiring is stuffed in the leftover crannies and even between them in the seat. The junk guys arrived 20 minutes after them, so I have one truck in the neighbor’s driveway, and the other in my dad’s – loading stuff from both sides of the house. It feels efficient and healthy and like a giant relief to be moving this stuff that’s been here for decades.

A light rain starts to fall. There are seven things left on the screened porch: Six huge capacitors (each the size of a briefcase, but with ceramic spirals sticking out), and a box of electrical diagnostic equipment. I’ve slated these items for the electrical guys, but when they got here, they determined that there’s no use for the capacitors (maybe mostly because of their weight), they’re too old to be useful – and too big. They each weigh 50 lbs. So I pointed at them, and the junk guys took them one by one to their truck, insisting they’d be recycled for scrap metal. “Yeah,” said Nick, lifting the first one, “I’ve taken these to scrap before. They’re heavy as hell!”

“We’ve shuffled all we can, and we can’t get this last piece in.” George said. He and Fred spent a couple minutes determining if they could swing by tomorrow and get it then. One last magical electrical engineering machine – a tool, a diagnostic box of some sort. George and Fred both looked at it, spending a moment to determine its function. It’s the size of a mini fridge, but weighs twice that; a metal box, empty on the top side, but with panels of wires and dials on the bottom.

I’ll be on a plane tomorrow morning,” I said.

“I guess we’ll have to let that one go, then. Sorry.”

“It’s ok. I really appreciate all you guys are doing. This stuff is all being donated to Dunwoody. Steve’s going to catalog it and finish the donation process for me. I hear their new electrical engineering department will put it to good use.”

“Oh,” Fred said, “That’s a great idea! Put it in the college, you betcha.” He looked at the metal box again, and the look on his face said what I felt: You can’t do it all. You can do what you can do, and that’s got a be enough.

And with that, I pointed to the last item, the heavy mini fridge full of electrical gauges and dials, and asked Nick if he’d put it in his junk truck.

Now I have to tell you this:

My dad‘s death wasn’t expected. He wasn’t sick. He’s been a smoker for 60 years, and died at 72, but no one expected it to be this year, this month or this week. In a fashion that is typical of my dad, though, he went out with a bang in Las Vegas. He and his brother were on their way to check off a bucket list item. He has talked for years about going to Nevada’s nuclear test site (high-energy electrical engineers have eclectic hobbies). In March he and his brother succeeded in visiting the Trinity Site in Arizona. He brought back a piece of Trinitite for my kids after that. They were delighted to hear the stories. This was the second leg of their bucket list item. He’s always had a fascination with nuclear anything, so this made perfect sense.

There is, however, a months-long waiting list to get on a tour for the Nevada nuclear site, but this was one of his fascinations because it relates to energy. So on a Thursday, they flew to Las Vegas and my dad didn’t make it through to Saturday morning. Monday, two days later was the tour. No one could go in his stead because passports and clearances are done in advance. Only US citizens are allowed in after a full scour of background history. So instead of the tour, Monday was filled with a frenzy of funeral planning. While I arranged the funeral and reception, my uncle flew out of Las Vegas back to his hometown then flew on to Minneapolis to help my brother open my dad’s house, for which they had no key.

There should’ve been a key, but the coroner apparently did not produce one from the pockets of my dad‘s clothing after they took him. I called two funeral homes, the police department, the coroner, and no one admits to finding a key (or change or any other pocket items, suspiciously) anywhere in his belongings. My uncle has twice checked everything he received from the coroner.

In fact we don’t know if there was a key, but we do know one item that was in his possession when he died, that we didn’t get back once he left with the coroner. On Friday night my uncle and my dad were walking through one of the casinos in Vegas, and my dad bought something. He always paid in cash, and he received coins back in change. He had a habit of always checking his coins to see if there was silver. Whenever he found a coin from before 1965, he would study the edge of it to see if the copper showed on the side, and if it was silver, he would keep it and add it to his collection at home.

On this particular night, in Vegas, the quarter he received back was a 1964 quarter of solid silver. He made a point of showing it to my uncle and remarking how rare it is to find those these days, before putting it back in his pocket with the rest of this change. That’s the spot where he also kept his keys. So, while we don’t know if there actually were keys, there was no change returned to my uncle when his personal items were given. And there definitely was change.

Back to Nick, the junk hauler and his almost full truck in the driveway. He picked up the mini fridge-sized electrical piece and made his way to his truck. I followed him. It felt final and successful, if not completely bitter in the finishing moment of this dark project. He set the piece on the bumper of his truck and reached inside, then opened his hand toward me.

“You might want what’s in here.” It was a secret key keeper, magnetically stuck to the inside of that metal fridge-box. The box had lived on our porch forever. I gasped and asked Nick where he’d found it. He pointed as I slid the thin metal top open. Inside were 2 keys to the front door.