Death of a Carpenter
In memoriam: Gil Fairholm, 1932–2021
My grandfather worked with wood. The musty oak smell of his old Virginia home lingers in my memory like a ghost. Open the rickety side door, and a puff of sawdust greets you as you pass by the woodshop and up the creaky steps toward the kitchen. The old shop is littered with lathes and saws and gizmos of every kind, worn out with years of loving labor. It stands as a sanctuary for works in progress — a handsome dresser in need of polish, a spindly nightstand with a wobbly leg, a wooden chest yet to be carved.
Grandpa was a serious man with a deep sense of propriety and responsibility. He inherited the dignified, no-nonsense work ethic of his Mormon pioneer progenitors. Faith, for someone of our stock, is something that you build with your bare hands, with sleeves rolled up and sweat on your brow. His great-great-grandfather, also a woodworker, labored tirelessly as a carpenter at the Nauvoo Temple. The famous tabernacle, as it turned out, was excellent kindling; his sacrifice ended up a burnt offering once the mobs were through with it. Leaving behind a pile of ash where a temple once stood, he fashioned wheels for handcarts and trekked west with Brigham Young.
And so my grandfather built a life of faith and duty as had those before him. He rolled up his sleeves and got to work, marrying my grandmother and siring enough children to fill a station wagon. His firmness was magnified by a razor-sharp intellect, which he put to good use in his career as a city manager and professor. He was a scholar of leadership and the politics of power, observing organizational dynamics with a keen analytical eye. His mind was a saw which cut deeper than anything on his workbench, but he used it with judgment, and care, and wisdom. “A good leader,” he told me once, “has to have a clear vision. What is your vision?”
When I was twelve, Grandpa made me a simple wooden box. He sanded it down nice and smooth and fashioned a thin handle along the center of the lid. I peered inside and found the box was empty. It was up to me to fill it. Winters became summers, and I stored my secrets in that box. A favorite knickknack, a scribbled note from a friend, an old silver ring — each found a place inside, safe from the vulgarities of the world. Grandpa had produced the container, its shape and texture and contour, but only I could fill it with my treasure.
I was never any good with wood. My craft was to shape sound. When I was fifteen, Grandpa gave me a thick stack of elegant staff paper. Thin black lines stretched across the pages in rows of five. It was up to me to fill them. So I hacked off harmony, chiseled rhythm, and imprinted it all onto those pages, a blueprint for my sonic structures. And I tried my best to sand down the edges and make it polished and smooth and beautiful. It was a haphazard hack job, uneven and splintery, but I had built it all myself. I wrote my first composition on that paper. And I kept on writing after all the pages were filled.
When I was twenty-one, Grandpa wielded an ornately carved wooden staff as he led my family through the halls of the temple to a sealing room. He looked patriarchal and impressive, like Moses leading the children of Israel through the desert. My sister joined us with her husband-to-be and kneeled at an altar. Mirrors on opposite walls framed the sparkling room, and an endless chain of reflection bounced across the crystal in an infinite cycle. My family was suddenly without beginning and without end, interwoven into the timeless fabric of God. He had given us eternity. And it was up to us to fill it.
Sometimes I think back to that old musty workshop. It’s been empty for a while now. The buzzing of table saws has turned to silence. The tools are gathering dust.
Tomorrow I’ll join with my brothers to carry a casket — a final bit of woodworking, a final container to be filled. And I’ll remember the humble box, and the blank paper, and the carved staff, and the mirrors that glisten endlessly. And I’ll stretch back to the ashes in Illinois and the squeaky handcart wheels and the emigrant ship leaving London for America — and all the things and places and people that pump through my veins and animate my lungs as they once did for him. And I’ll thank God for all the calloused hands that whittled my contours so I could fill in the rest. And I’ll think of a certain carpenter from Nazareth who knows a few things about dying, and about living, and about how you have to do the first one if you ever hope to do the second.
