The Electric Chair
Perhaps not the most welcome present for your sixtieth birthday!
There it sat, a great beige blob, taking up half the living room, the chair that the family had bought Don for his Sixtieth. The old chair was gone, to the tip he supposed, the chair he had been sitting in – for how many years? ‘Dad’s chair’, the one nobody else presumed to sit in, and in spite of all Diedre’s moaning about the dreadful tatty old thing he had hung onto it. That was his place, his little island in the family noise and chaos. The place where he had quietly grieved for the growing up and leaving of that family, the passing of his Mum and Dad.
He used to like a quiet smoke in that chair, but not any more. Now there were three more versions of Diedre to keep him in line. Diedre times three, so no chance of any sneaky disobedience.
But this chair! He had smiled and looked as pleased as he could.
“Just the ticket, a real Dad’s chair.” Luckily nobody noticed that he didn’t actually sit in it on the day of the party. Children and grandchildren wanted to try out the tipping bits, and the lifting bits.
” Look Grandad, it sits you up. You don’t have to do it yourself. Super for your bad back” “Yeah, just the ticket, just what I wanted, thanks everybody”.
Was it hell just what he wanted, a great big old invalid chair.
He had had enough of chairs lately. A plastic folding one in Human Resources, where he waited to pick up all the paperwork for his early retirement. The doctor’ waiting room velvet benches, dusty and smelling of damp people. Hospital clinic waiting room – longer waits there with a big TV but no sound. The Consultant’s office, better upholstered and softer, and finally the hard white plastic chairs waiting to be taken into the big white plastic mouth of the scanner. Hard and cold.
They didn’t know, even Diedre. He had slipped under the family radar with some cunning excuses. He was even quite pleased with himself. It was what he wanted, to keep to the sympathy and the jokes about Dad and his old bad back. There would be time enough when it was certain. Keep it all to himself, “That’s the ticket.”
The two of them were in the kitchen making a cup of tea and chewing over what they were going to do with the garden.
“Lay it down to lawn”, he said, “More space for the grandchildren to play” he said.
Less for Diedre to keep up on her own is what he thought. The phone rang. He glanced at it and took the phone out into the garden. She watched, keeping back behind the curtain as he sat on the garden seat and answered it. She could hardly breathe as she watched him put the phone down and bury his head in his hands.
She pulled back from the window, and was busy putting out cups and biscuits, trying not to let her shaking hands rattle the china .
“Who was it, love?”, trying to sound unconcerned and normal .
“Oh, just the Surgery, the doctor’s putting me onto a different painkiller, and would you believe, they’ve signed me up for physiotherapy and a course at the gym!”
He turned to go into the living room.
“Well, now most of the bums in the neighbourhood have tried it, perhaps I can get a go on my chair.”
She made the tea and followed him into the room.
“‘I’m going down to the shop in a minute, do you want anything?”, but she was talking to a silent room. He was fast asleep in his new chair.
As she walked to the end of the street, she had time to text her eldest daughter.
“Think it is OK – not what we were all afraid of”