Trashing My Dad (or What’s Left of Him)
David R. Weiss – May 28, 2026

Honestly, this has been a hard piece to write. Hagiography (saint-making) comes easiest with the dead. To be faithful requires something more. I intend to be faithful.

Now, I’m not about to pick a fight with a dead man. I love my dad. He remains one of the clearest measures of character for me as I live my life. However—

And let me say this as gently as possible: he left a lot of trash behind for us kids to clean up. That’s maybe more blunt than gentle. Let me soften it a bit. My dad was no hoarder. I spent several years working for a nonprofit, delivering groceries to homebound elderly persons. I’ve been in several homes where hoarding was afoot. Dad was no hoarder. His home was probably typical of many elders who’d been in the same home for decades (six decades for my dad). Stuff happens.

Still, as I helped clear out closets, drawers, and boxes—and especially as my sisters and I emptied his attic, backyard shed, garage rafters, and the garage itself—I was stunned by how much stuff had happened. Accumulated. Piled up. Things held onto and never revisited, never relinquished.

We rented a dumpster and, even while recycling most everything we could, the dumpster filled with all the stuff that had happened over the years and now had nowhere else to go. Had it been dealt with “on time” bit by bit over the years, I’m quite sure much of it could’ve been repurposed, redirected, or more easily recycled. But with Dad dead (Mom died in 2022) and the house needing to be emptied and sold, that dumpster became destiny for too much stuff … reduced to trash.

I was frankly exasperated by some of the stuff we found. The well-used, flattened-down, back-in-its-original-box luggage carrier from the station wagon Dad drove … probably three decades ago. Monthly IRA statements, three-hole-punched and in binders, all neatly boxed … going back forty years. A baby crib, disassembled and stored in the garage rafters for close to forty years as well. Really, Dad? Really?!

Despite my title, I’m not really out to trash my dad. In fact, it’s the very strength of his character that makes the amount of his stuff that became trash both tragic and teachable. The stark contradiction here tells me that even good—even remarkably good persons can have their actions, their habits, their attitudes distorted by the slow but inexorable press of societal norms.

And in our society, the norm is strong to deny finitude. Close kin to our denial of death, this denial of finitude reaches further, subconsciously shaping us to live as though limits have no claim on us. And so even the best among us (like my dad) live … shop … accumulate … store … and finally trash … all manner of stuff. The norm of denying finitude—carried by our ads and our societal attitudes and aspirations—is to live as though unlimited consumption, accompanied sooner or later by unlimited waste, is simply the way it’s meant to be.

This norm has guided the present dominant version of humanity (there have been other versions) for several centuries, of which global industrial extractive exploitive consumptive capitalism is simply its most extreme, tragic, deadly expression.

And, as we filled that dumpster out in front of my parents’ house, this was the unavoidable damning truth: even persons with remarkably strong character get pulled into—and misshapen by—the irrepressible current of this worldview.

Let me be clear, neither of my parents were excessive consumers. By most measures the stuff they accumulated was pretty modest. And it was likely the virtue of frugality that held on to all that stored stuff—just in case. Death just arrived before “just-in-case” ever came calling. And, unlike my dad’s IRA, even after he crested 80, there was no required minimum distribution of his stuff.

But there are two more things to say. (Well, three.)

First, this world (our world, the human world we inhabit, which is seamlessly—perilously!—interwoven with the natural world in which we dwell) has arranged itself structurally, systemically, socially, and economically through a cascade of choices small and large (most of them driven by profit, convenience, or the consolidation of power) into a flow pattern that require a garbage dump as part of the consumer “circle of life.”

Except this garbage dump (ubiquitous around us, though usually unseen by us) is so out of balance with the planet’s capacity to safely absorb waste and renew it. Additionally, much of what gets sent there is stuff utterly orphaned from its place in nature—deprived of its ability to break down. Our established flow pattern becomes, in fact, a circle of death. A slow death, to be sure. And we keep our dumps mostly out of sight, so they don’t unsettle our sensibilities. But eventually all the stuff-turned-trash will trash us.

Second, my parents had little option other to live and die (that is, purchase and waste) within that system. It enveloped them, making it extraordinarily difficult for even remarkably good people to live in ways that didn’t deny finitude. But for the few days we filled that dumpster my sensibilities were unsettled. Profoundly. My gut churned with each load of stuff I unloaded into the dumpster where it became trash in the unholy alchemy of this world. Our world. My world.

I do not blame my parents. Forces far larger than their best intentions framed their lives—though it makes the amount of stuff left behind no less tragic. No less deadly on a planet that is decidedly finite. I suspect my nearness to them, my love and admiration for the life they built together, is precisely what deepened my pain as I filled that dumpster. Thus, tragic—and teachable.

Which brings me to my third learning. I, too, live inside the same death-dealing worldview that my parents did. I, too, am tempted—kettled* is not too strong a word!—to live as though planetary limits do not apply to me. This stuff-becomes-trash is an intergenerational dynamic. (You could easily argue that the denial of finitude has only amplified itself as we get closer to crashing up against it.)

Margaret and I are deeply invested in being good partners with the planet. We recycle religiously. We compost conscientiously. We push back against consumptive practices, rituals, and habits that are intrinsically ungreen. But we are far from perfectly green, entangled still within a worldview that whispers to us daily this mantra: no limits. And those whispers have done their work even on me.

If I were to die tomorrow, my kids would be renting a dumpster for a bunch of my stuff. From that perspective this piece is less about “trashing my dad” than challenging myself to double-down on my efforts (kettling be damned!) to repurpose, redirect, and recycle my stuff while I still have the time to do so. And to deliberately weave the truth of finitude into every choice I make.

Trashing my dad was painful. I hope I can turn that pain into action.

*To “kettle” (from the German kessel: cauldron or kettle) is a police technique that constrains the free movement of protesters until they are “boiling” on top of each other. Used for crowd control (or entrapment) it seeks submission through a show of irresistible force. Our worldview is so all-encompassing, that any persistent choice against it can precipitate an experience of being kettled: constrained by systemic-structural forces into acting as they desire.

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David Weiss is a theologian, writer, poet and hymnist, “writing into the whirlwind” of contemporary challenges, joys, and sorrows around climate crisis, sexuality, justice, peace, and family. Reach him at drw59mn@gmail.com. Read more at www.davidrweiss.com where he blogs under the theme, “Full Frontal Faith: Erring on the Edge of Honest.” Support him in Writing into the Whirlwind atwww.patreon.com/fullfrontalfaith.