Today, I am sorting through piles of stuff that do not belong to me. And by piles, I mean mountains of odds-and-ends that have been stored inside a workshop, some of it for more than 25 years. So, this is kind of like a treasure hunt. In this room and under the clutter and inside countless boxes and tubs are the hidden pieces of a man’s life.

When Wayne and I started doing crazy construction projects on the side years ago, this shop was one of the first things we built. We started on it before we started on our houses. We pulled strings and drove nails the way it was done before pneumatic and power hammers changed the framing world.

This building is massive. The footprint is modest enough, but the vertical element is staggering.

It was wintertime when the two of us first set foot on this property along Palmetto Creek. We parked along the old logging road and walked through the woods to a knoll above the creek basin. When Wayne talked, his hands moved like he was spreading out puzzle pieces on a table in thin air. Palms down. Fingers extended.

“Right here would be a good place for the house. But I want to start on the shop first.”

We walked a short distance, maybe 80 feet, but this time we were facing west. The sun was getting low, and the air was clear through the naked trees of winter. The hillside sloped away at a sharp clip headed for the water below.

“Look at that view,” he said.

The Palmetto broadens out into a maze of beaver ponds as it heads toward Lake Lorainne. Tones of silver and gold reflected back to us as we stood there in the evening shadows.

“If I do it right,” Wayne said, “I can get that view out the west windows on the house and from the shop. Won’t that be incredible?”

When Wayne laughed, it was half cackle and half cough. He could make his eyes bug-eyed when he raised his eyebrows. He punched my shoulder, and we shook hands.

Everything Wayne did, he did with a sense of adventure. He was an artist and painted often. In his mind, the shop had to honor the view. The very construction of it was intended to fit among the tall oak and hickory that surrounded it.

The ground floor down the slope is of concrete block construction with piers. The backside is open. There’s a concrete floor.

Over the years we stored everything imaginable under his shop. Lumber. Used wood stoves. Pipe. Worn out saws. Old refrigerators. Half bags of mortar mix. Deer stands. Scaffolding.

The overall outline of his shop is barn-like. Two shed roof lines on either side of a raised loft section in the middle. But there is not now, nor has there ever been any livestock living here. It’s fully closed in and was always intended to be used as a woodshop.

The main floor is wide and fully open. No dividing walls. Two huge beams overhead to support the upper floor. The west facing wall is a bank of nothing but windows, but you already know why.

The loft overhead is where Wayne would paint or work on his stained-glass projects. It would be a studio of sorts. Narrow with a view down to the first floor across the front edge of the loft. In the back, another bank of windows with a view to the creek and a lifetime of mesmerizing sunsets.

I refer you back to Wayne’s sense of adventure.

“Let’s put a cupola on top,” he says.

“What?” I was trying to wrap my brain around his words.

“Man, you’re already 40 feet off the ground at the back of the loft, and with this slope, a cupola will put you 120 foot above the creek. Why would you want to do that?”

“Because we only get one chance to do it right,” he said.

And, of course, the cupola is not just a façade. No sir. There’s a set of attic stairs in the loft that gives access to it. A small floor with a little elbow room. You can stand inside, and through the four windows you can see the whole world.

Wayne never got to finish his shop. Life got in the way. Once he got it dried in, he started on the house. We still did Habitat projects together. He helped build other people’s projects. He chased mission trips to repair tornado damaged houses. He served the community as a firefighter. He and Debbie raised three girls. He pastored FBC.

So, the shop stood neglected. It became the place to store his stuff. You name just about any piece of construction material or supply or tool and Wayne had it stored somewhere.

Since Wayne passed away last March, Debbie has been on a mission to finish the shop like Wayne would have wanted it. I get it. When you lose your spouse, there’s a sense of “things unfinished” that comes over you like a wave. Unfinished objectives. Unfinished dreams. Well intentioned starts left incomplete.

This shop is one of those.

She’s hired a crew to work on the outside, but it’s the inside that she has on her mind today.

She sent me a text. “I need your advice on what to do with Wayne’s stuff out in the shop.”

The first day I came over, Debbie was standing inside the front door, hands on her hips, looking rather overwhelmed by the magnitude of the moment.

“I just don’t even know where to start,” she said.

“How do you eat an elephant?” I asked her.

We smiled and began the process.

That day I hauled a cab-high load to the dump in my truck. Mostly wood scraps. Cut-offs. Odd shapes of plywood of all sizes. The kind of stuff a man keeps because he knows he will need it one day. I asked Wayne to forgive me with each piece I tossed.

Everywhere I turned, there were discoveries of our time together. A toilet flange plug for the pressure test on the pipes. A box of clips for the roof decking. Boxes and buckets of 16d nails and #8 spiral shank nails. Today’s nail guns have made these into antiques.

Wayne made jigs for everything, his handwriting on each one so he would know why he made them. There were a few unidentified handmade objects, and I found myself wandering through Wayne’s mind trying to understand what in the world he was up to. He was creative at everything he did.

This entire shop is a coffer of Wayne’s life. Buried treasures. Memories of a life well lived. Evidence of a man who did for others way more than he ever did for himself.

This is day two and I can finally see most of the floor. Still more to do, but I can stand by the back windows and look down the woodland slope to the creek. The room is breathing around me.

There’s a whisper in my head out of the silence. Hands pointing. He was right.

This is one amazing view.