We use our everyday items thoughtlessly. We reach for the knife and chop the lettuce without thinking much of it; we get in our cars and simply drive them to work; the necklace we wear becomes a fixture around our necks, so that we hardly think of it anymore. But when we die, for those we leave behind, these items can become mystical. They transform from run-of-the-mill objects to magical harbingers of who and what once was. Our bodies are no longer tangible, yet the things we used are.
When my father passed away, it was sudden, he was young, and if you’re ever able to be prepared for such a loss, my family for certain was not. We wandered around in the aftermath, stunned. Had this really happened to us? Had it really been our father God had taken?
A little while after the burial, I drew a side table out from the corner in the living room to place something on it, and when I looked at its surface, I saw a slight ring of dried wine. I gasped at the sight. I even put my hand to my chest. I had seen my father place a glass of deep-purple homemade wine on that table about a thousand times, but he was gone now, and the remnant of a moment when he’d been alive underwent a transfiguration: It was no longer an ordinary wine stain. Suddenly, it felt like a piece of archaeological evidence—proof that once upon a time, he had walked among us.
If you’ve been reading my work or listening to my podcast for some time, you know that I’m pretty sentimental, so it shouldn’t surprise you that a wine stain took my breath away, but I think even for the less sentimental among us, the items the dead leave behind—from the most pedestrian like napkins and tablecloths to the more extravagant like jewelry and property—acquire a special power that is difficult to dismiss.
At the time of my father’s death he was driving a 1997 Ford F-250 as his work truck. Throughout my life daddy had all kinds of work trucks, from a Jeep Wrangler with a snow plow hitched to the front to a gray van that looked like it could’ve been a bread delivery truck in another life, to various other pickups, as well as larger dump trucks. If I carelessly missed the bus for school, my father would drive me in those work trucks, rolling slowly down Route 202 as a line of cars gathered behind us. I hate to admit that sometimes I was embarrassed to have him drive me in his trucks. They were so different from the sleek cars many of my classmates’ parents drove. And of course my father was so different, too, from another country, working with his hands, not educated and unable to understand the sophistications of American life the way American parents did.
When he died, I was, thankfully, very much past all of that. I didn’t have a car myself at the time, and so, sentimental and slightly crazy as I am, I began to drive his F-250 to and from my job at the newspaper and to anywhere else I needed to go.
Needless to say, a truck of that size is not practical for a five-foot two-inch single gal wearing four-inch heels to her job where she writes and edits articles behind a desk. It’s large, and a lot of machine to handle. I pushed the lack of practicality aside because it gave me comfort—to the extent that I could experience comfort at the time—to sit behind the wheel, surrounded by my father’s things: the simple, everyday items of a lifetime of work, from papers to rags to screws, and to know they were just where he’d placed them.
A year or so passed, and as my mother began to sell my father’s work machines, which were mainly gathering dust and rusting, the decision was made to sell the truck as well. I didn’t have the money to keep it and maintain it as it would need; if I was going to invest in a car, it would need to be one practical for my lifestyle. So, with great heartbreak, the pick up truck was sold.
I’d regretted letting it go ever since, kicking myself for not having had more fortitude at the time to somehow keep it in the family. My brother knew we’d sold it to a mechanic who worked at the Ford dealership in the town next door, and aside from that, just like our father, the truck was no longer in our lives.
Almost fifteen years passed. I owned several cars in the interim, including a few Jeeps, which my father loved. I got married, had a son. My husband and I talked often of buying a vintage pick up one day, and every time the subject came up I’d tell him the story of my father’s truck. Several months ago, while grabbing a beer with my brother at the local pub, they heard that the man we sold the truck to had died, and it was parked outside a shop nearby.
Wouldn’t it be amazing, my husband came home and told me, if we got your father’s truck back?
It turned out that the truck in that lot was not after all my father’s; it looked similar, but was clearly not his, and then we learned that, in fact, the deceased man’s sister had come to town and sold everything in just a few days, including the pick up. It could be anywhere now, not just in the town next door. Disappointed, we dropped our wild idea that it might be in the family again.
The fact is, objects are stories. They are props in our family narrative. I can tell my son about his grandfather, and I do, but an item like a big ol’ work truck, something that he can sit in and feel, that helps him to experience his presence. It can help his Nonno feel real in a way a photo or oral remembrance can’t recreate. It’s said that the most popular family heirloom is the family bible, often with births and deaths of generations recorded in its pages; there’s a felt power in knowing you’re holding something generations of your ancestors held in just the same way.
On the way home from the grocery store one evening, my husband wanted me to turn down a street over the border in Jersey. My brother had asked around, and it turned out that the man who’d bought the pick up lived on the same street as the original guy we’d sold it to. I told my husband he was crazy, even if it was the pick up, who would want to sell a truck they just bought? A vintage one at that? But he insisted we at least take a look, and I obliged, shaking my head as I turned the wheel, tired and just wanting to get home.
And there it was, sure as if I’d seen it yesterday, my father’s old pick up parked in someone else’s driveway.
Even still, I reluctantly agreed to knock on the door, telling my husband he would have to talk to the guy, because this was a nutty thing to do. We apologized for the intrusion, and explained who we were. The man was named John, just as my father was, and he was very kind, just as my father had been. He’d been working on cars since he was a teenager and was taken aback to meet the daughter of the original owner.
There’s a code in the vintage car world, he said. If the original owner finds you, you have to sell him the car. He also added, I remember my neighbor saying the guy who’d owned it before him was a landscaper. Was that your father? I nodded, a little choked up. Yes, it was.
He said he’d think about it and gave us his number. A couple weeks later, my husband asked me to help him carry some bags downstairs. When I lifted my gaze and looked out the back window, there it was, parked again in our driveway: The big, gangly light green truck that had belonged to my daddy. My husband had surprised me with it, and it was ours again.
Our dream is to ensure the truck becomes our son’s one day, and then who knows, maybe his child’s and on and on, as long as this machine will run. Now, my son calls it, “Nonno’s truck,” and although it needs some fixing up, and we’ve had to put a few more bucks into it, that alone is worth every penny.
Dolores, wow! I loved walking through this love story with you. Your pop led you back for you and his grandson. If we stay open, isn’t it beautiful how they watch over us with eternal love? Your husband is a mensch! What a feeling it must be to sit in the truck! 😘
I’m floored, as usual. Your dad wanted you to have that truck back. Wow.