I brought home a chair

It is with regret that I inform you that after 17 years in exile my desk chair has come home.

As you can see the chair is broken which is how it ended up in exile. I took it home, to my parent’s house – which I still considered home in 1997, for my father to repair.

It was an unusual trip home for me. I’d just visited the weekend before, for Mother’s Day. But I took a day off on Monday May 19th and spent a long weekend at my folks. I had ever so slightly kissed the rear-end of another vehicle in the weeks before and had acquired a new bumper for my truck.  That was the real reason for my visit. I had a new bumper and my dad and I spent the weekend putting on a new bumper. I thought we’d have time to repair the chair as well….but time ran short.

I had no idea how short!

My dad wasn’t one to wax eloquent about things, but as we worked that weekend we talked. We talked about deep subjects, particularly death and dying. At the time I knew he was speaking about a fatal diagnosis my uncle, his brother-in-law, had just received, but as fate would have it, it was a conversation I have taken much comfort in over the years. I also take much comfort that because of the conversation that weekend, my dad left me an ‘I love you’. It was never something we said but……

As I was preparing to leave on that Monday afternoon; we decided I should just leave the chair and daddy would fix it and I would bring it back on my next visit. I left it just inside the door in my dad’s barn (AKA workshop). Until this past weekend it has never been moved.

Last weekend, when I took the chair from the barn, my mom asked ‘are you going to take that chair with you’. I tried to explain but couldn’t … that it was exactly one week from being 17 years since I left it for my daddy to repair. It was time to move on and fix the chair myself.

I miss him every day! But especially this time of year!

This year, pops…..I’m fixing that chair!