The Blue Chair

A little fabric tear, that’s all it was. Yet it changed the appearance of the chair, and it changed me. Changed how I dealt with the loss of her. Such a seemingly insignificant little thing. Many would have thought my reaction odd... extreme, perhaps. Excessively emotional. But that chair was special. For thirty-five years, I had loved it as I loved no other treasure I had ever possessed. It spoke to me with words my mother could never say... words every daughter needs to hear.

It was an old cane chair. I bought it for one dollar at a second-hand store. It was sturdy, and I liked the shape. The cushions were firm, but their lime-green cotton covers were stained and worn.

I saw my mother gaze askance at that chair, but she said nothing. She just pasted on her ‘something must be done’ look, piled the cushions into her vintage blue Volkswagen and drove off. I didn’t even see her pillage my sewing cupboard for the lovely floral linen fabric I had bought at a sale some months before. I had used it to make window coverings, but there was a good deal left over. It was a quality fabric: soft cream with flowers in varying shades of pink.

A month later, my mother brought those cushions back, all brand new. They looked ever so elegant. She’d had no training in upholstering, nor in any other art for that matter. But she was clever. She taught herself a great many skills. She had recovered those cushions perfectly. She had even piped the edges and covered buttons for the back.

I moved the chair inside. It was far too beautiful for the porch, where the fabric would have rotted in the sun and rain. I declared the chair mine, and I placed it under the window in my study. It matched the blinds I had made back then, but we’ve moved many times since. It was always my special reading chair, though, wherever we resided. I told the children they were not permitted to sit in it. I know they sneaked in now and then, and I smothered a smile when I caught them. I think they felt a special connection to my mother when they sat there. I did. Sitting in it always made me feel close to her.

Those covers lasted nearly thirty-five years.

I suppose I shouldn’t have placed the chair under the corner window, where it invited the western sun. Or perhaps it was little Alexander, my youngest grandson, climbing on it often. He loved that chair. He seemed to somehow know it was special. Perhaps he sensed my mother’s spirit when he sat there. But like all little children, he was less than careful about removing his shoes, and he let zippers and buttons catch on the fabric. Not that it mattered. It had had its day. The fabric was fading. The back was stained where my head had rested on it for so many thousands of hours. For months, I’d been telling myself new covers were needed, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to tear apart that last precious reminder of her.

And then I saw the tear. It wasn’t a long one, but it was impossible to ignore it. The time had come.

I ripped those covers off to make patterns for new ones. And I cried. Tears flowed in buckets full. They soaked the fabric and they puddled on the sewing room floor, and they blinded me so that I had to leave my work for a while.

I made new covers. I could never match my mother’s talent with the needle, but I think I did an okay job. I think she would have approved. Only it was hard, working through tears.

Where were all those tears three years before? I couldn’t weep back then. First, there was the blessed relief that her pain had finally ended... that I never again had to sit in that loathsome place and hear her moan and watch her writhe. Relief that I need never again pace those nursing home halls and wish I could lift her burden and pray that there really was a heaven and she would go there soon.

Then there were people to call, notices to write, and a funeral to arrange.

And then there was that harrowing Christmas when I couldn’t make myself sit at our table, beside the empty chair that ought to have been hers.

After the holidays, there was the memorial service she had asked me to arrange, and the scattering of ashes. I had to try to smile at all the friends who came... friends who had not been in contact for so many decades, and yet they remembered.

My mother had never had much, and she thought she’d left little. The estate should have been a breeze to manage, but it proved a nightmare. So much to do, so still I could not cry.

My mother taught me to be strong and proud, and never let my inner hurt show. Never display emotion. I taught her, eventually, to not be afraid to hug in public, but she never would concede it was okay to be seen crying.

“Crying at funerals is a display of selfishness,” she’d announced harshly when I wept at my Grandmother’s graveside, so I did not cry at hers.

It’s over now. Three years and more have passed, and I’ve at last allowed the tears to flow. I no longer feel ashamed to confess that my heart aches. I miss my mother. I cannot pass the corner in a certain street without my heart lurching. I cannot look at a certain photo on the wall without a tear forming. And when I look, now, at that recovered chair, I feel as though I threw away the very last of her. I tore apart the seams of that cover, and with every rip I tore at the memory of her.

That chair is not quite so special anymore. It’s now covered in plain blue linen. Not pretty, but elegant still... appropriate for the setting. But it’s blue. Blue for her trust, loyalty, sincerity and wisdom. Blue for the calm of her spirit and the purity of her soul. Blue for the peace death brought her and for the heaven in which I pray she now dwells.

It will never be an outside chair. And no matter that that special fabric is now gone and the stitches are now mine, it will stand forever as a tribute to her... a reminder of that special thing she once did that said the words she seldom ever spoke: “I love you.”