While we were waiting at the airport for our anniversary flight, my husband suddenly claimed he had forgotten his passport at home. I called my mother and asked her to grab it for him. Twenty minutes later, she called back, her voice shaking. “Honey, he set you up! Come home now!” Before I could ask why, she sent me a photo of something she had found in his bedside drawer. The moment I opened it, my heart sank. Suddenly, every strange thing he had done at the airport made perfect sense…

Before leaving, I selected the wooden hand plane Dad had repaired when I was twelve. I wanted to keep it at home, where I could see it regularly instead of leaving every reminder of him inside a storage unit.

Later that evening, I noticed the kitchen drawer that had been sticking for months. Dereck had repeatedly complained about it, insisting that replacing the cabinets during our planned renovation would be easier than repairing the problem.

I remembered something Dad used to tell me whenever we encountered damaged furniture. He believed that replacing an object should never be the first solution when a careful repair might allow it to serve its purpose for many more years.

“Before you replace something, see whether it can be repaired.”

I removed the drawer and placed it on the kitchen table while Mom watched. After examining the wooden edges, I realized that a small amount of material needed to be removed to help the drawer slide smoothly.