Believe What You Will - March 4, 2011

I do believe that we die an earthly death but that a part of us, our soul some call it, lives on.

Today, I had an eerie thing happen. Was it just coincidence or did Pete play a part in it?

From early childhood I have loved working with tools, hand and power, building, fixing and creating. I "inherited" this from my father, and I guess you could say that I passed the gene down to Pete. Drill presses, table saws, hammers and just about any tool you can conceive of resides here because my father's motto, when it came to tools, was that every task is easier if you've got the right tool to do the job.

This morning I decided it was time to repair the latch on our drive gate and in order to do that I needed a specific size drill bit. If you're at all familiar with tools you'll recognize that the average drill bits are pretty standard in size: 1/16", 1/8", 1/4", 3/8 ", etc. You don't usually get a 15/64" or a 9/32" bit when you buy a pack of drill bits.

Today I needed one of those unusual size bits, 9/32" to be exact. I went down into my workshop in the basement but couldn't locate one. I came upstairs, muttering to myself, knowing that there had to be one around somewhere, and headed out to the garage. Pete has as many tools as I have, maybe even more because when I saw something that neither of us had I'd buy it for him for Christmas or birthday or just because I thought he might need it. The problem is that he had been working on his boat renovation through the fall and never really was able to put things in order, so my garage is strewn with toolboxes, tools and all manner of boat parts.

I was envisioning a long and arduous search for the elusive bit when I saw a handful of drill bits in plain sight on a shelf as soon as I walked toward the back door of the garage. I scooped up them up in my left hand and without a glance pulled out one with my right. It was 9/32". I felt a sudden calm and then the tears began to come. You can believe what you will, but I don't believe this was a simple coincidence.

Bruce and I picked up Pete's ashes and brought them home this afternoon. I carried them from the funeral home and held them close to me, just as I held him when he was an infant almost 36 years ago. I love you, Petey.