His Stuff by Patti Chandler

Stuff. What is it about stuff?

When we lose someone we love, we have to do something with their stuff. What if the stuff doesn’t have any monetary value? What if it just has meaning, a memory? How much of that stuff should we keep? Do we lose the memory if we don’t keep it? Would they be mad to know we didn’t keep it?
My dad loved to bake. He made pies for us whenever we came home, or for the holidays. It was his way of expressing his love for us. We found his plain old glass Pyrex pie plate this weekend while we were cleaning mom’s cupboards. It looks like it still has flour on it!

I watch my daddy, in my mind, standing there, wearing his green apron with ‘Piemaker Extraordinaire’ monogrammed on the front of it. He would roll the dough and lay it in there just so. His chubby hands would crimp the edges and spin the plate and he would look at us and chuckle knowing it would be so delicious we could never resist eating it!  The smell itself would be impossible to ignore.
I’ll always have that memory. All those pies. If those pie plates and pie tins could talk, they would tell endless stories of a man who baked for the those who grieved, rejoiced, needed comfort ……… those he loved and for whom he wanted to show it in the most tangible way he could. He would bake a pie and it was full of Ministry. It was full of love.

I smile, tears welling in my eyes, because it dawns on me we could have called him the “PIE-MINISTER.”
I take some pie tins home. I’ll pull them out from time to time and run my fingers over them and let the memories linger and hear the lilt of “The Wabash Cannonball” or “Deck the Halls”, two of his favorite songs to hum while he stirred and crimped. I’ll think of him and remember how much he loved us. His stuff – not so much – he really didn’t care about stuff.