Natalie Ford

On the surface, to put it simply,
he is a man who understands garbage cans.
And yes, he gets on your case
about taking out the trash
and he believes in breaking down boxes
like Lions on Sunday.
But to me, what I want you to see is that
he is a certain type of undertaker
in his ability to immerse himself
in the world we all want to avoid.

He is a man who helped me when I was
knee-deep in my own garbage.
Who hauled load after load without
a word of judgement.
Who did not turn and run
at the smell of my sour past
my rotting regrets
or my moldy mistakes.
He simply showed up with his box of contractor bags
with no eagerness to make everything a metaphor
and moved my shit to the road.

Perhaps you are unimpressed and irritated.
Perhaps you wish for a dad who doles out cash
or doesn’t insist his children finish their chores.
But son, this man is not country club
or quarter zips or cable knits.
He is work boots and a farmers tan
and one day when you realize
that life is about who you can call
when you’ve made a mess
that you think can’t be cleaned up,
you’re going to be glad you have the dad that you do.

And I know (more than anyone)
that he doesn’t deal in words.
He speaks in sounds—
floor boards and bones gone bad
keys rattling at 5AM
his own engines scuffing out of sleep—
but in all of this he is trying to tell you:
Take care of what is given to you.
Clean up the mess, even if it isn’t yours.
And finally, he is trying to show you,
day after day after day,
what it looks like to do a job until it is done.
Even when it stinks.