EMPTY CHAIRS

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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.

Empty Chairs.

Strange, how rich and full and almost complete an empty chair may seem.

by Bill McDonald, PhD