My father’s toolbox contains labels written for hands that no longer work

Dear Delyara, My father has motor neurone disease. He was a carpenter for forty-five years and still owns every tool he ever considered useful. Today, he asked me to label the drawers because his hands are now too weak to open several of them and he wants my nephew to inherit everything correctly. Plane blades. Hinges. Drill bits. Chisels. The labels are in my handwriting because Dad can no longer write clearly. He sat in his wheelchair directing me, becoming impatient when I put screws in the wrong section. For a while, it felt like being twelve again, helping in his workshop and getting everything slightly wrong. Then he asked me to label one drawer “Things worth keeping.” Inside were my first wooden toy, Mum’s broken kitchen handle, a school ruler with my name scratched into it, and dozens of objects I would have thrown away. I asked why he kept all that rubbish. He smiled and said, slowly, “Hands remember.” Tonight, my labels are all over his workshop, instructions for tools his hands built a life around and can no longer lift.