My father-in-law's impenetrable fortress of security

My father-in-law Tom has been gone nearly three years. I don't think about him every day, but it's often enough that I realize how much I miss him. He was, at his core, a good and decent man. Faithful, loyal, and dryly funny.

You could always tell when he thought he had said something hilarious because he would grin and his shoulders would shake with a little laugh. I imagined him thinking to himself, "Oh Tom, that was a good one."

Tom was a product of his generation, though like my dad, he had a love for modern gadgets. Computers, in particular, were his thing.

That was partly how he became the email and newsletter guy for our church. He had the know-how and a willingness to serve, so if there was news worth sharing within our congregation, it would come electronically through Tom.

He also had his funny quirks, though who among us doesn't?

One of the things Terry and I often laugh about is Tom's garage door code.

When Tom and my mother-in-law Judy moved into their home on Green Ridge Drive 20+ years ago, the detached garage had an automatic opener with a keypad on which you could set a passcode.

Tom needed something memorable, but he didn't want it to be too obvious. He decided to use the date of his and Judy's wedding anniversary, BUT...being a guy who was always one step ahead of would-be criminals, he made a sneaky adjustment.

Tom and Judy were married on July 1, 1961, which translates to a six-digit passcode of 070161. Ever the tricky devil, Tom opted instead for 070262, increasing the day and the year by one. It was a stroke of CIA-level security genius that would make it impossible for anyone to gain entry to his beloved garage.

Absolutely no one was getting in there to steal his scraps of wood and yard tools.

Tom passed away in September 2023. Sunday mornings at church haven't been the same without him, nor have family and holiday get-togethers.

I'm now the church email and newsletter guy, having inherited the role largely because I felt I couldn't say no.

When it came to serving his church and his family, Tom never said no. It was one of the most important things I learned from him. 

We're working toward having minimal stuff in our house for the kids to clean out when we die

The basement storage room in question

Such a morbid headline today, and the second time in a month I've written something that makes it sound like I'm at death's door.

Thankfully, that is not the case. I'm only 56 years old and in pretty good health. Neither Terry nor I plan on going anywhere any time soon.

BUT...we are also of the age where we have lost all four of our parents. In each case, we were involved in the job of cleaning out their houses after they passed.

When you find yourself renting a dumpster and spending hours and hours combing through boxes in Mom and Dad's attic trying to figure out what to save and what to toss, you become conscious of the need to spare your own kids that same laborious task.

So Terry and I have committed to a program of getting rid of the extraneous stuff in our house over time.

When I say "over time," I admit that means we're not exactly in a rush. If we were both hit by a bus today, our children would have a heck of a time cleaning out the basement storage room, not to mention the rest of the house.

It's just that 34 years of marriage and five kids mean you accumulate a lot of possessions, some of which you want to keep.

Those boxes of baby clothes? We store them for grandkids, knowing full well they take up a whole lot of space in the meantime.

That wall of Christmas decorations? Hey, we're festive people!

High school memory bins? We've admittedly trimmed those down over time, but we still have yellowing newspaper articles and varsity jacket letters that will simply be thrown away when we've moved on from this life.

Speaking of newspaper articles, in that storage room are a few large bins of three-ring binders stuffed with copies of virtually every story I ever wrote for The News-Herald and the Plain Dealer when I was a sports journalist.

That's thanks to my dad, who meticulously cut out each one and taped them onto scrapbook pages for long-term preservation.

A year ago I came this close to throwing those binders away, but I just couldn't do it. It felt like I would be dishonoring years of Dad's work and turning a blind eye to how proud he was of his sports writer son.

So instead I vowed to digitize them all before I throw away the hard copies.

Which, of course, will take some time.

Time I assume I have.

Kids, my sincere apologies if I never actually get around to it.