The office chair

A look at my Dad’s life from his perspective

The chair. Dad had a high back office chair in which he spent much of his time sitting day in and day out. While at his desk in his second-floor office, he enjoyed writing and researching various topics: from politics, to music, history and genealogy.

It was a time when working out of the basement was not only not truly an option, but also, more of a possibility with us three kids mostly up and out of the family home. The room, formerly my sister’s childhood bedroom, still had some elements of that time and was bright and the furniture encircled the chair.

That battered chair. The leather texture of the arms and back, the creaking sounds it made when shifted. The imperfections of the wheels. When I sat down in it I could feel how it lurched forward and to the right, some design flaw or element of misassembly when it was purchased years before.

We had talked about how before Dad returned, like the computer I had purchased and set up for his 2023 Christmas present, we would replace this now worn and uncomfortable chair. Mom said he would roll back and forth from his keyboard to his printer and his bookshelf, rolling with one foot across a broken sheet of plastic.

The last 5 years of Dad’s life were like that chair. Functional but simply not…