by Dan Robson
Everything on the desk is just as he had it. The whiteboard above still has all his notes and the papers he’d clipped to it with magnets. His briefcase sits at the bottom left of the desk, where he’d placed it the last night he came home. And I wrote and wrote each day, and each night I readjusted the jar with his pens and pencils and moved his ruler back into place.
I’ve spent very little time at the place in Toronto that Jayme and I share. She knew I was broken, so she mostly accepted my absence—but I know it hurt her. I’ve put the life we promised to build together on pause. I haven’t been able to feel the excitement of the dreams we shared. I haven’t been able to feel much at all, besides anger and exhaustion. I worked from morning to night, writing and writing—losing myself in other people’s stories, unwilling to face my own. Because when I did face it, it felt as though the walls were caving in.
So I pushed forward, thinking it was what I was supposed to do, because if you keep moving you can’t fall. And when I looked in the mirror and saw my sagging eyes and the weight in my face, I didn’t recognize myself. When I realized that the scotch bottle on the shelf was near empty again, I told myself it was only for the buzz. When I heard Jayme’s voice breaking on the phone, asking if I could just come home, I told myself that she didn’t understand. And I let myself resent her for it.
Death is a flame. It doesn’t stop with the last breath. It flickers and jumps, and spreads to all the edges of the lives of those left behind, withering them. Death burns and keeps burning, if you let it. It burns until you fall apart.
Half a year has gone like that, and I’m no closer to closure than I was the day the phone woke me from my sleep. Deep inside, I know it. Deep inside, I feel ashamed. I can feel the part of me that is screaming at me to stop this ridiculous cycle of grief. To get up and move forward—to live my life the way my father would want me to. Part of me knows that the flame has reached my future. That if I don’t stop this now, I’ll lose Jayme—I’ll lose everything.
But I don’t go back, because I need to fill the void he left. I think about my mother living there, alone, without him—and the thought feels like abandonment. I think about the house, crumbling without his hands, and it is betrayal. I stay to fight those feelings, even though I know they are my own illusions.
When I was young, sleeping in these rooms, I had a recurring nightmare. It haunted me for years. I’d dream that I was awake and alert, but alone. I’d be in a bedroom, or the living room, and suddenly I’d feel something grab hold of my arms and begin to pull me further into the room. I couldn’t move. I’d try to scream, but I’d have no voice. No one was coming to save me. The unseen force was holding me, taking my breath away. I was stuck, until I’d wake up in a panicked sweat and run into my parents’ room and climb into their bed to hide beside my father.
I think about those haunting dreams and wonder if that’s how he felt as he lay on the floor beside that same bed, unable to move or speak, dying. I feel that way now. And somewhere in the depths of me I know that the real reason I’m stuck here, in this place, in this state, is that the grip of guilt and grief won’t stop until I force myself to wake up.
The house has gone untouched since the day he died, aside from the inevitable accumulation of things. The problem of it is inescapable. In our house, every task had fallen to him, from tightening the smallest loose screw to tearing down walls.
And he loved it. Whenever he received a call from me or my sisters while we were away at school, wondering how to fix this or that—really, asking him to come down and fix it for us—he always seemed eager to get in his truck and drive over, as though he was happy we’d found yet another thing we needed him for. Fixing was a kind of love for him. I think he found joy not only in the work but also in the outcome. In a practical sense, there was very little in our lives that Dad couldn’t fix with his tools. I can’t remember a single time when he had to call on someone else to get a job done. And he was often the person whom people we knew called when they needed help. If it was something they didn’t know how to do, Rick would know. They relied on him. I think knowing that enriched him.
The house he fixed is our biggest problem now. We refuse to just sell it. It feels too much like quitting—and besides, Mom isn’t ready to leave it behind, she tells us. I wasn’t either, so even if she’d wanted to move she’d have felt too much pressure to stay.
But if we wouldn’t let it go, we’d have to find a solution to the matter of Mom living here alone. That thought plagues me more than anything.
* * *
—
Renovating the basement is her idea. Years ago, Dad roughed in plans to put in a full bathroom and bedroom, but there was never time to get it done. Why not finish the job now? There are always people at the church looking for a place to stay. And the addition would help cover the cost of maintaining the place, and potentially fill it with life again.
It was a good idea, but actually carrying it out presents another problem entirely.
Through the near dozen times Dad had moved me between cities and condos throughout my twenties he had, without fail, managed to find a construction flaw in each of them. Most were blamed on the work of lazy, rushed contractors who just wanted to get the job done. He’d check out a door that wouldn’t shut cleanly, a towel rack barely clinging to drywall, or a light switch that appeared to have no purpose, and he’d shake his head at the state of the world today.
His handiness was just a wonderful convenience then. And I shrugged off my father’s attention to detail as an idiosyncrasy. I’d never considered the philosophy behind his disgust for cutting corners. If you started a job, you needed to finish it right. That was one very clear lesson he’d taught me. To always do your best work, because that is how you will be remembered.
I knew that if this was a job Dad could take on, he wouldn’t seek outside help. It was a simple renovation, after all—put up a few walls, add a tub and a toilet, slap on some paint, and call it a day. So the idea of bringing in an outside contractor to finish Dad’s job felt wrong. It was a skill set that had been close to me my entire life, and yet one I’d never sought to master, let alone show any real interest in. But I’d wanted to. I’d planned to. I’d told myself that one day, when life slowed down and maybe I had a son of my own, Dad and I would take the time to build something together.
It was always someday, though. Never today. And today never came, and so we never did.
Guilt is a twisted cousin of grief. Sometimes they seem almost identical, tangled up in each other. But grief is understandable. It’s the agony of absence. That knowledge deep in your consciousness that no matter what you believe—no matter what faith you carry, what hope you possess—it is a near certainty that you will never see the person you love again. Maybe that feeling is wrong (and wouldn’t that be wonderful), but we all recognize it. Grief is the endless goodbye. But guilt, after death, is different. It’s the pain of memory. It’s the realization that there are no more chances to make right what you should have in life. People leave forever, but their ghosts linger, at least for a time, in the constant haunting of our minds.
As much as my father’s tools and the things he built carry his memory, they carry my guilt. In my adult life, I’d focused entirely on my own journey. I never took a Saturday to sit in the garage and work with my father on the car or help him construct a new shelf for the laundry room. I never asked him to show me how to use his new table saw without chopping off a finger, or how to sink a nail on the first swing. It just wasn’t useful information to me, then. I didn’t know what it meant to be square, plumb, and level—even though he’d been showing me his entire life.
And let’s just lay out the metaphor here. This guilt isn’t just about the physical tools I didn’t learn how to use while he was here. It’s about the life of a man I loved deeply but never took the time to understand. It’s about hearing the words spoken at his packed memorial—seeing that
he touched people’s lives in meaningful ways—and not knowing why or how he’d done that. And realizing that I’m not equipped to do the same.
This pain is about the feeling that I’ve failed him as well as the need to keep learning from him and from his life, because he left me incomplete. That’s what I see in a bag of tools that I don’t know how to use and in a house that’s falling down.
There is a belief in Japanese folklore that tools acquire souls through use. I’m not an expert on tsukumogami, but the idea that objects carry life when they’re properly used resonates with me. When I grasp the smooth, worn leather grip on my father’s oldest hammer, it feels like so much more than a piece of steel. Dad brought this hammer to life. He gave all these tools purpose—he gave them a soul.
So when Mom suggests the renovation, I see it as a way to find him again. A way to spend time with his ghost and the tools he animated. A way to give them purpose again. This is my chance to keep that part of him alive.
“I’ll do it,” I tell Mom. “I’ll renovate the basement.”
She looks up, trying to find a soft way to say the obvious.
“Well, maybe you can help someone?”
She means hire someone else to do it. The thought is unconscionable. But I also know she’s right. If I tried to renovate the basement alone, it would end badly. Very badly. I don’t know the slightest thing about what I’ve proposed. The truth is, I don’t even know the difference between a Phillips and a Robertson screwdriver. I don’t know how to lock in a drill bit or operate a circular saw. I certainly have no concept of how to put up studs and drywall a room. Every interaction I’ve had with tools has been beside Dad, watching Dad, admiring Dad—but never actually emulating him. Never learning the same way he had from his father.
If I don’t know how to replace one of the rotting pieces of wood on the deck, how can I possibly think I can figure out how to frame, wire, drywall, plumb, or tile on my own?
There is one possible way around this, though. One of my closest friends, Andrew Lockhart, is one of four brothers who grew up in an endlessly creative and wildly rambunctious household. Their mother, Claire, is a colourfully talented art teacher, and their father, John, a sharp, logical personal injury lawyer. The boys inherited both of their parents’ traits. Sleepovers at the Lockhart house regularly included a vigorous debate about religion or politics, the completion by at least one of the brothers of a self-directed art project, and a fist fight. Without any brothers of my own, I viewed the Lockhart boys as a mystifying model for the competitive chaos of brotherhood. They were gifted, erudite, wild things. And I loved them dearly. Andrew completed an MBA at Stanford and now runs his own start-up in Silicon Valley. Luke, the eldest, also has an MBA and works in marketing. Tim, the third, is a lawyer. Matthew, the youngest, is the most creative—and struggled to find the right fit for those talents until embarking on a series of do-it-yourself projects and realizing a remarkable skill for renovations and carpentry. He’s recently finished the Lockhart basement, one that once served as a dank, unfinished arena for those heated debates, art shows, and bloody brawls. He’s also built a large deck in their backyard, which my father had stood on, inspected casually, and approved of overwhelmingly. Now, after flipping a couple of houses, Matthew and his wife, Rachael, have launched a design and renovation company.
It was Andrew who first suggested that I chat with his little brother about my family’s intentions for the basement and my unreasonable plan to complete them by myself.
“Why not hire Matt?” he says. “Do the job with him.”
It’s a decent idea. I knew Matt well enough to know that he’d understand my obsession with being part of the teardown and resurrection. He was close enough that he might tolerate my bumbling presence as we worked side by side.
The Lockhart boys grew up within a devoutly Christian household and Matt had come to a profound experience with faith in adulthood. He was one of the many who came to visit us at the hospital after we’d been told there was nothing that could be done to save Dad. He stood next to the bed where Dad lay, connected to tubes and wires and a bunch of beeping machines, and he prayed. It was deep and earnest, with his full heart, with every last ounce of faith that I knew he truly, deeply believed in. I was grateful.
Matt was excited when I called to ask him about doing the basement. He’s the kind of guy who always sounds thrilled, but I could tell the concept had connected with him. He happily agreed.
With him on board, I’ve tweaked Dad’s original plans just enough to gain Mom’s approval. Matt and Rachael come over to discuss the project. Rachael is the grounded, professional mind in the operation—the perfect balance to Matt’s scattered, creative genes. He’s sketched out a rough outline for the basement while she’s prepared a “lookbook” of potential tiles, flooring, paints, and designs my mother might want to use in the new basement. I’d thought the process would weigh heavily on my mom, but she seems energized—eager for the improvement.
It’s comforting to see Mom’s keen interest as she sits at the dining room table flipping through the colour schemes and design options Rachael has brought along. She seemed refreshed and recharged—excited to push forward, after these hard months, with a future she’ll have to design on her own.
Part II
Foundations
6
When I was nearing fourteen and he was past forty, Dad and I renovated the main floor of our house by removing a wall between the kitchen and the family room. I say “Dad and I” because that was how he framed it—as if I were part of the project, a member of the crew.
My specific job was to help him knock down the wall by smashing a hammer through the drywall between the studs, punching out holes wherever I could. It was destructive and deeply satisfying work. We bashed the wall to bits, exposing the unseen space between. We toppled old studs that had held up the wall, and I helped Dad carry them out to the garage. Later we ripped up the linoleum in the kitchen and the beige carpet in the living room. We replaced these with hardwood, connecting the rooms together.
There was something in the demolition and the rebuild that I found exciting. You don’t often get permission to whack through a wall with a hammer. I was astonished to discover that our house had its own skeleton, these old bones, that held everything together. It was part of the structure and shape of our place. I’d never considered that many of the walls between us could just come down—but there we were, smashing through the drywall, moving the duct work, and cutting out the wooden frame.
With the wall down, from the kitchen sink you could see over the table and all the way to the fireplace in what had been the living room. The transformation of two rooms into one seemed remarkable to me. The wall had appeared so permanent, but nothing really is. That’s just how we see it. Two unique spaces, each carrying its own collection of moments and memories, merging into something familiar but entirely new. And by our own hands.
Before we finished the renovation, we decided to put together a time capsule to explain who we were to whoever might find it long after we were gone.
I typed out the details: that we were a family of five—Mom, Dad, me, and my slightly older sister Jaime, and our younger sister Jenna. We had a cat and a dog, our dad worked in construction, and our mom was a nurse. I planned to be a goalie in the NHL. Jean Chrétien was prime minister. Each of us included something we cherished, something that would help show the future exactly who the Robsons were. (My artifact was a Patrick Roy hockey card, the Montreal Canadiens goalie who was my boyhood idol.)
We placed it all in a Ziploc bag inside an old shoebox and wrapped it with tape. Then I laid it on the floor, just inside an opening between two studs. Dad put up the drywall, sealing in the story of us.
Later we embarked on another home improvement project. Dad sketched out the plan on a napkin at the Family Restaurant, an old greasy spoon where we’d often go after church. We were all getting
older and it was apparent that more space was badly needed. The basement was no longer usable in its unfinished state. We’d outgrown the blank canvas that the concrete floors and wooden rafters provided. We had no more use for the old toys, the playhouse, the chalkboard, or the easel. Imagination alone wasn’t enough. We were teenagers and needed a space to entertain our friends—to navigate the complicated social scene of adolescence.
Dad’s plans included a large open rec room with a tiled drop ceiling and a carpeted floor. And at the bottom of the stairs that led into it he planned to add a new bathroom and bedroom.
I poured syrup over my pigs-in-a-blanket as we considered Dad’s rough sketch.
A basement is the most honest space in a house. And ours was much more authentic than the tidy halls and rooms of the main floor hastily cleaned whenever visitors arrived. The polished veneer of the entrance, the tidied living room, the sparkling kitchen always felt like a family fib that smelled of Pledge and freshly placed potpourri. The basement held the scattered, messy truth that lay beneath us.
It was the starting and ending point for so many childhood adventures. It was where we spent our rainy days in the summer and our evenings when it was too dark to play outside. It was where the cardboard box our refrigerator was delivered in became a small plane that took us around the world. The basement was where our painted masterpieces came to life on the wooden easel Dad built for us, literally painting the wood when we ran out of paper. It was where Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles went to war with Batman and the Joker, where we practised the cursive we’d learned in school on a chalkboard drilled into the concrete, where we pretended to be grown-ups in a two- storey wooden playhouse that soared from the floor to the ceiling.