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Marc2b -> Time to say goodbye to a faithful old friend. (7/12/2009 1:04:56 PM)
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There is no sense in pretending anymore. She is old. Her joints are worn out and you can hear them groan and squeak. She is bowed in the middle and it seems like every day now I have to clean up something she left on the floor. I don’t want to do it but there is just no pretending anymore. She is old. It is time.
For seventeen years she’s been there for me. She had belonged to my father for her first three years but when he moved to Florida he decided not to take her with him and so gave her to me. Steadfast and loyal, she was always there when I opened the door. If I had been having a hard day she was there to offer comfort and repose. I think I most loved her on nasty winter, stay at home, afternoons – especially on a Sunday during football season. Sometime during the second half she would just call to me. I’d lay down on her and she would support me with her strong beams and joints; her padded arm rests would cradle my head and her cushions would envelope me in comfort. I’d usually bring something to read, a section from the Sunday paper perhaps but it never took longer than fifteen minutes. I’d lay the paper down; the sounds of the football game on the television would just slowly drift away into meaninglessness. Sweet, blissful, untroubled sleep would be mine. While I entered dreams of whimsy or wisdom she held me sure and never once complained.
She complains now days. She creaks and groans and, occasionally, even twangs. I understand. She is old. There are worn spots in her fabric (most of them courtesy of the claws of another friend who left me two years ago) and more than a few rips in her. Her stuffing slowly trickles out of her and duct tape has not stemmed the tide. There is just no pretending anymore.
I will have to get a replacement of course. I will want to get the new one before I take her out the door (I’ll have to draft my nephew into a couple of hours service – he owes me) and onto the pickup truck for her final journey. I will feel like an adulterer while I look over my options. But I must do it. I will take my time to make sure that I make the right choice but if I take to long will I just be practicing another form of denial? Will I just be delaying the inevitable again?
The new one will have to be strong, of course, but also be well padded. When I bring it into my home it will be precisely that – an “it.” It will feel alien to me. Perhaps I will even resent it, looking upon it as an intruder that has unjustly usurped an old friend’s place. It may throw me off my stride if it is a little longer or shorter than she was. If, while making a turn around it, I nearly trip over it or stub my toe because habit has caused my to misjudge, will I cuss it out? Yes, it will take a while for us to get to know each other but time will bridge the gap between us. We will learn to accommodate each other and then get used to each other, and then it will become she and we will take those flights of whimsy and wisdom together. My world will be whole again.
But that is in the future. To get there I must face the facts and do what must be done. There is no sense in pretending anymore. I must face the truth.
Goodbye my faithful old friend. I will miss you.
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