The Chair
It looks just like an everyday normal chair, no bells, no whistles but what defines it is not its appearance but its placement. You see this chair sits in a cubicle and its purpose is to hold people when they are registering at the hospital.
I sat in that chair as a child with a bleeding finger with my daddy holding a tightly wrapped washcloth around it stopping the bleeding after a friend had accidently shut the door on my finger. I clung to my daddy in pain and fear of what a Doctor would do.
I sat in that chair as a teenager with the pain of a freight train plowing through my brain. Barely able to speak my boyfriend spoke for me. The migraine that turned out to be strep was so intense they gave me an injection 2 hours later.
I sat there breathing my Lamaze techniques, excited that I would give birth to my first born baby.
I sat in that chair 3 more times with 3 totally different pregnancies knowing the pain I would soon endure.
Then there are those who have occupied that same chair on the day they started chemo and radiation.
Many sat in that chair expecting to sit there again who went in for surgery and never left the hospital alive.
The chair holds the weight of the dying, the excitement of births, and the sickness of a lifetime. It’s not the appearance that tells the story but it’s the placement in the hospital and in our hearts that recalls them all. When did you last sit in that chair?
We all sit in this chair with uncertainty; you have once again captured a part of how we all share a common experience no matter who we are!