CHAIRS

I can’t really account for it, but lately I have been thinking about chairs. Oh, not just inanimate chairs, but the connection they have to the animate beings which have sat in them.

The other day I was feeling a bit tired (given my consistently distorted sleep schedule) and headed to my room to take a nap. As I prepared to lay down in my bed, I gazed towards the far wall and saw the same thing I have seen there for several years.

Two chairs. One was for lack of a better characterization a stage chair. The other was, well, I will get back with you on that one. As you might imagine, given the term I have used for it, the afore-mentioned chair came off a stage. I was the staff counselor at a local church, and since there were three matching chairs on the platform, and only two were ever used during the services, I made a decision to “borrow” one of them for my office; which I summarily did.

Having absconded with the stage chair, it became a counselor’s chair in the space of the 53 seconds it took for me to walk from the front of the church auditorium, into the lobby, up two flights of stairs, and through the door of my second floor counseling office.

The chair was (and continues to be) constructed of heavy blue cloth seat and back cushions, and lightly lacquered wooden arms and legs. While it is fairly non-descript, it is at the same time sturdily built and comfortable.

I cannot begin to tell you how many stories I have heard while seated in that chair. Based on my average work load, I have counseled thousands of men, women, boys and girls as I sat in that chair. Amazing stories. Traumatic stories. Heart-rending stories. Women molested as children. Financial losses. Vocational issues. Mental illness. Abortion. Adultery. Failed marriages. Guilt. Unforgiveness. Child neglect. Imprisonment.

I like to think as I deliberated in and gave guidance from that chair that I have made a difference in countless lives; lives that I believed (and continue to believe) that God dreamed I would impact before He flung the worlds into space.

When I left my position with that particular church, the chair was the only thing which came with me. I could not bear to part with it. I have continued to offer counsel from its confines.

Pt. 2

The second chair? (Well, I’m glad you asked). The second chair is an old (a very old, indeed) rocking chair. Until tonight I have never seen another one like it. However, in the past five minutes I was looking at internet images of rocking chairs, and I found what appears to be a very close match. It was described as an “Antique Solid Quartersawn Oak Barley Twisted Caned Winged Rocking Chair.” What a mouthful! (I had always referred to this chair as a “Cane & Barley Rocking Chair”).

It is a beautiful turn of the 20^th century antique. The sides, arms and rockers are constructed of oak coated with the darkest brown varnish. The uprights and legs are, (as the title implies), uniquely twisted. The back and seat are wicker, and were evidently created from bamboo.

And as rare as this rocking chair seems to be, I can assure you it is even rarer still. Without contradiction, it is one of a kind. For you see a friend of mine handles estate sales, and one day he made me aware of an upcoming auction for which he was preparing.

The daughter of a late centenarian had recently contacted him. She was moving up north, and wished to divest herself of her father’s household goods and furniture. Her father? (Drum roll). General James Van Fleet; an Army officer who served during WWI, WWII and the Korean War, (during which time he was theater commander), and who was recalled by President Kennedy during the Vietnam Conflict; (though he was not assigned there). President Harry Truman called Gen. Van Fleet “the greatest general we ever had.”

My friend Calvin knew I was an amateur historian, and was aware of my three plus decades service in the military. Would I be interested in purchasing the rocking chair prior to the auction? Needless to say, it took me all of seven seconds to give him a resounding “Yes!” And best of all, when it was “all said and done,” I bought the chair at a fair retail (and not celebrity) price.

When I asked my friend about the history of the rocking chair, he was able to provide me a few basics. As a major in the Army, Van Fleet had been assigned somewhere in California, and had rented an apartment there. The rocking chair was, like all the other furniture in the apartment, owned by the landlord. When the then major was reassigned, he had loved and enjoyed the chair so much that he offered to buy it. And buy it he did. And it followed him for the next seven decades of his life on earth.

Since I purchased the chair twelve or fifteen years ago, I have attempted to locate a photo of General Van Fleet seated in it to no avail… until recently when I ran across a poor photocopy of a newspaper clipping on the wall of the county historical museum and library. Did I mention the general lived in this county for years? (Well, he did). In spite of the poor quality of the picture, there is no doubt about it. The general is seated in the rocking chair. Of course, I asked the librarian to make me copy.

I have often mused about the horrendous events of those seventy years, and the kind of thoughts the general must have thought while he was seated in his precious rocking chair. Remembering the First World War. Engaged in the Second World War. Theater Commander during much of the Korean War. His diplomatic service in Greece. What potentially life-altering decisions did he make? What military maneuvers did he conjure up? What edicts did he foment? What battles did he fight?

Pt. 3

But allow me to reflect on a couple of chairs much more near and dear to me than those I have previously described.

Empty chairs   

Two empty chairs

Oh, they have been empty in the past; anytime someone happened not to be sitting in them.

But this time is different.

For you see, they will never be occupied again; at least not by the original two who once filled them.

I can still see my parents, Henry and Erma, seated in those matching recliners. Reading newspapers, or perhaps a National Geographic, or simply starring out onto their mobile home-side pond.

My dad loved that chair, or better put he loved what that chair afforded him.

Rest and relaxation. Information. For as I have implied, he gleaned his latest knowledge of the world here, as the result of television, or a favorite magazine. Discovery. For so often he would lift those ever-present binoculars, and gaze upon one or the other of “his” birds. And the gators which lolled their lives away upon the sandy beach below.

More than once, many times more than once, I showed up, unannounced, and invaded his “inner sanctum;” only to discover my dad in the midst of an ethereal sleep. Which, as with us all, is strangely prophetic of that slumber which one day must overtake each of us.

And always, and without fail, I would exclaim,

“Wake up, Daddy. They’ll be plenty of time for sleeping!”

And he would rouse himself, if only long enough to acknowledge my presence, and e’er too many moments elapsed

…well, you guessed it.

And my mother.

I think she occupied her matching recliner, more often than not, for the sake of a selfish agenda.

To simply dwell in the presence of the one to whom she had pledged herself; some six decades hence. For it was here that she experienced and enjoyed the presence of the man who had, long since, relinquished activity in favor of the sedentary. Oh, mama put up a good show of doing one thing or another, as she occupied her matching chair. But I think it was all about my dad, and the singleness of what took two to complete.

And now. Now the chairs are empty.

My wife has a photograph of her parents. It was taken at the lake home of their son. And in that poignant picture Doc and Ruby may be seen seated on the lakeside porch, facing one another, and engaged in a private conversation; known and meant only for themselves.

I can picture my own parents engaged in a similar exchange. But that one set of chairs have been exchanged for another. What the years stole from them has been restored, and in good measure.

Empty chairs. Not some cheap montage of wood and metal and fabric. But an almost spiritual place.

My father occupied his chair when, after his stroke and my mother’s subsequent inability to care for him, I made him aware it was time to submit himself to the inevitable, and to enter a skilled care facility.

My mother sat in her chair the last time we took her home for lunch, and the final occasion on which she saw her sisters; having been placed in that same facility.

It was in this room, and in these chairs my parents lived the most and best of their waning years. It was here that they did the things people do, as they scratched out what joy still remained to them in their declining years.

It was in these chairs that they entertained family and friends, complained about the weather, boasted of a new great grandchild, worried for the fate of the nation, laughed about a childhood picture, remembered something from their youth, memorialized a lost comrade, and expressed hope for their children’s and grandchildren’s futures.

It was from these chairs that they laughed and lived and loved, and prepared to divest themselves of the mortal and to put on immortality.

by William McDonald, PhD. Copyright pending