story of Dad's chair

Pop was buried over six years ago. I found myself in his woods one more time. The house where we had all grown up was now just rubble and the overgrown remnants of the basement. I searched for the chair and smiled as I saw it in the clearing.

I remember the day my brother and I took possession of the green Naugahyde recliner. It had been his throne for three quarters of his last years.

We were so miserable on that day. We cried a lot - I suppose it was a kind of catharsis -- as we struggled to drag it out of the living room where it had stood for all our shared memories.

We pulled the heavy, awkward thing out the back door trying to keep our fingers from being pinched by all the folding parts of the recliner.

We pulled it down the four rickety steps of the back porch.

We pulled it slowly, as if to the dirge playing within our hearts through the back yard until we located his favourite spot in the woods behind our house.

When he could breathe enough to walk this was where he would come. We installed the chair beside the huge, old hickory nut tree where he had taught us the names of the brightly coloured birds who sang so mysteriously, hidden in the trees above.

Then my brother and I took turns ceremoniously sitting in and christening this quiet, bittersweet spot in his memory. We stood together, holding hands and called out to the birds and trees to cover it with their everlasting love....