Seats of Possibility

Visiting my Great Uncle Gary back in 2008 was a difficult thing because I knew his diagnosis and that it meant his time left here was limited. I wasn’t particularly close to him or my Aunt Katie; however, my Grandma had been very close to them since she was a young woman dating my Grandpa. So, every time we’d visited before or seen them at a family reunion, it didn’t matter how much time had gone by, they picked up like time hadn’t separated them at all.

From their bond, I developed a sense of familiarity and family loyalty to Uncle Gary and Aunt Katie. I’d heard stories from them of what it was like to know and live with my Grandma and Grandpa in their formative years, and of what my Dad was like as a kid and all of the mischief and trouble that he was always making. I heard stories about what it was like to raise a family and to deal with the struggles that we all inevitably face as we grow older.

There was always a palpable kindness and love in the room when visiting with them. I suppose that happens naturally when you meet someone early in life and then spend more than 60 years married to them. Bewilderingly (to me), that sense of love so thick that you could almost reach out and grab it only seemed thicker on my last visit with Uncle Gary and Aunt Katie. I didn’t understand how a couple could be so positive when faced with the countdown that cancer had thrust into their lives. But when they looked at each other, they just glowed.

It’d been almost a decade since I’d been out to their home and so Uncle Gary gave us a full-blown tour (as best he could now that he was terminal) and showed us what he’d been up to fixing since my Dad and I had last seen the place. Their covered porch was filled with lots of seating for guests. These three chairs, the size made for children, caught my eye. The horizontal lines creating grids with the posts of the porch railing behind them. The brightly colored paint worn thin and disappearing. The shadows cast over their seats. These were seats where grandchildren and great-grandchildren had sat and listened to the grown ups talk and reminisce. The seats where they looked out into the field and saw the horses next door and the barn that Uncle Gary had built. The seats where they could look up at the clear skies at night and see the darkness sprinkled with stars. Each was a seat of possibilities.

And in seeing these chairs, it finally hit me why it was that Uncle Gary and Aunt Katie could remain so positive despite their impending fate—they had been blessed with 60+ years of love and laughter, of memories and experiences. And their gratitude for those blessings outweighed their sadness.