“Forty dollars,” my brother-in-law Dale said, resting his hand on the red log splitter my husband had bought six years earlier. Jim had died in April, and Dale had taken the machine to his shed “for safekeeping” during the week of the funeral. Now, with winter approaching and fifteen cords of oak waiting to be split, he wanted me to pay him to use what had always belonged to my family. I was forty-four, raising my sixteen-year-old son alone, and working every hour of overtime I could get driving a propane truck. I could have argued, but I had learned that a widow’s energy was worth protecting. So I handed Dale two twenty-dollar bills and asked for a receipt. He laughed as he wrote, “$40, rent on log splitter, one afternoon,” signing his name beneath it. I folded that little piece of paper and tucked it into my shirt pocket. My son, Cole, was furious when I told him what I had done. “Mom, you paid him for Dad’s splitter?” I simply handed him his gloves and reminded him that daylight was running out.

We spent the afternoon splitting oak in the cold October air. Then Cole noticed something written in white paint marker on the splitter’s hydraulic tank. His father had recorded every oil change there for six years. Beneath the dates was one final line: “Cole. First cord. Age 11.” My son laid his gloved hand over those words, and for a moment, neither of us could speak. Jim had always left little pieces of himself everywhere, but that afternoon, we found something else in the lean-to: a list written in carpenter’s pencil. Mrs. Hartmann, one cord. Donna Peterson, one cord. Marlene Olson, one cord. Three widows on our road who had received free firewood from Jim every October for years. With only six hours of daylight, Cole and I managed to split four face cords. One was for our own stove, but the other three belonged to those women. We returned Dale’s splitter before dark, exactly as promised, and drove straight past our own driveway to deliver the first load. What happened when an elderly widow opened her freezing front door would remind my son that his father’s kindness had never really disappeared…CONTINUE READING