There’s a pier and some chairs. Four nice ones that are sturdy, if faded, and four cheap ones. The sturdy ones welcome your weight, the flimsy ones bow and flex and groan. A warning. Either lose weight or buy better chairs. But the chairs matter little, because who would ever live a life where chairs mattered? If a chair matters then the life is wasted, no doubt about it. The four nice chairs came from a house I sold maybe fifteen years ago. A foreclosure on the lake, imagine that. But that’s where the chairs were and my dad knew they were there. He knew I was selling the house. And he knew to ask the movers if he might buy the chairs. Whatever he paid doesn’t matter, because they’re just chairs. But you can be certain he paid less. The newer chairs were not his purchase, they were from somewhere and someone else. I don’t know where or from whom, I just know they’re flimsy and I don’t like them. No one really likes them, but they’re necessary. My dad settled into one of the sturdy chairs, his bias as obvious as his failing eyesight. What a tragedy it is to live a life with clarity and be forced to watch it fade and darken and blur. It beats the alternative, I remind him, with death being the alternative in case you, like most of my clients, also think you’re going to live forever. His eyes weakening his chair sturdy and his visor, the color of which I cannot say, firmly planted on top of his head. He leaned into the chair and looked out at the lake that has been everything to him for as long as anyone can remember. His motions are slower now. Slower today than they were yesterday and slower yesterday than the day before. It’s been that way for a while now. He thought about the scene and the waves and the sky and offered a bit of insight into just what was on his mind. Some wisdom, perhaps. Or an observation of irony, a deep thought that could only be thought of on that lake, on that pier, in that chair. “There are too many pontoon boats on this lake.” Too many indeed, Dad.
