She had cancer--Nancy.
She beat it for a while--ten years.
But the osteoporosis caused her so much pain, the fractures just for turning in her bed.
She sat in her recliner. A lot.
She could get comfortable there.
I don't know how with the 'bulges.'
My husband, Ed, would tease her,
"Can I have your chair when you die, Nan? You don't weigh much. It won't have much wear."
He got the chair. Suzanne, Nancy's daughter, gave it to him, and Ed's addendum of,
"If I'm still alive, Nan, since I know you'll be at my funeral" didn't come true.
We got Nan's chair.
She used to keep her money in that chair.
She and Jack, her young husband, who died at 52 and left her a widow of 50
had never had more each month than most of us hand to the pizza delivery guy.
But when Sue and husband Dave came to live with her they paid the bills.
And Nancy had dollars to stuff in her chair
And give to the needy.
Hurricane victims, cancer patients (as if she wasn't one),
the home care nurse whose daughter was a single mom struggling to get by.
Nancy had tens of dollars to give.
She was lucky, Nancy was. She was rich.
The dollars from the chair were dispensed with alacrity--
"Your daughter needs a communion dress. Take this $20 to help with the cost."
Out of the chair it came.
It helped her back, the fractures,
to get that money out of the chair
so it didn't press on her spine.
That chair sat on the second floor.
It should have fallen through with the weight of the cash that was hidden inside.
A $5 bill for a little boy. A $20 bill for a big boy.
Grandchildren, nephews, nieces, friends, the RedCross, Salvation Army.
The money fell from the chair.
It blew into lives and sometimes went to many hands like "Pay it forward."
The richer recipients understood that once in their wallets it multiplied and moved on.
Aunt Nancy made less money babysitting than some folks spend in a day,
Yet the chair became stuffed and then...
The chair is gone
but the stuffing lives on.
Suzanne had emptied the chair of all its dollars and somehow they grew as she and Dave
continued to find good causes
for the money in the envelope where the cash from the chair had been placed.
Year after year she was able to send the money out where Nancy would never go.
Nancy had agorophobia.
But through the money in her chair she went all over the world.
No wonder she had fractures in her back, sitting on that damned stuffed chair.
It was bulging with.....
I check my own chair a lot.
It's not as uncomfortable as Nancy's.
She helps me dig deep to popcorn, a barrette, a ten dollar bill.
Hey, Aunt Nancy, my back feels better.
A family nearby found a ten in their mailbox just as the milk ran out.
The note said, "Good luck. Nan."
I don't have faith, don't go to church, but my back feels better when all the
popcorn
and barrettes,
and
...stuff is cleaned out of my chair.
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