Finally, after 18 years, I had to say goodbye to my old dark brown recliner. During the past few years, we found it a challenge to maintain it – like having to clean it twice a day to get rid of perennial dust. It had served me well in my retirement years when I spend more time sitting down watching Netflix or reading if not lying in bed because of weak legs and a frozen right arm.

It is a push button manual with none of the add-ons of the latest electrical recliner which my son Ferdie had bought me recently. The new one is beige, wrapped in microfiber material with USB ports for the cellphone.

But my story focuses more on the slightly bigger twin chair of husband Andrew. For all the years he had it, he literally lived in it which was all of nine years. We would sit together side by side before the TV set but since I was more mobile, he would sit by himself most of the time.

To him, the recliner was an answer to his prayer as he needed something more comfortable than the mattress of his bed. We had to change the mattress almost every year but even after we were able to secure the best mattress in town, he would still spend more time in the recliner.

During the last three years of his life (he passed away at 99 short of 40 days before reaching a century), and sometimes even before that, he would ask the driver to take it along during our hospital visits which became more often.

Of course, he slept in the recliner, not in the hospital bed. This made his doctor remark that perhaps he should ask the hospital management to purchase recliners for the geriatric ward. After he passed away, Ferdie placed the recliner as a memento in one of his rooms.

Thus, the recliner had been a frequent traveler to at least the three major hospitals in Metro Manila where Andrew had been confined for various ailments in the span of at least four decades and more frequently during his last year in 2015. This was for various ailments among them, malabsorption of nutrients when he lost 80 lbs which he eventually regained after a few months; aneurysm, pneumonia, and other ailments of the elderly.

The old recliner like your best friend was always there. We converted our recreation room into a hospital ward with a hospital bed, oxygen tank, etc. The caregivers would carry him to his bed but he would always ask to be moved to the recliner.

Even during his palliative days, he would insist on sitting in his chair. If he didn’t experience a fatal attack where he had to be rushed in an ambulance to the hospital, he would have expired in his recliner.

I don’t share the same attachment to my old recliner. But after enjoying the first few days of novelty with my new chair, I now begin to complain about comfort. The old friend is still around and I won’t be surprised if one of these days, I would ask that it be returned to its old place.

At my current state of health when I find it even difficult to navigate around my two-bedroom condo, I try to seek comfort not in my bed but in a recliner. I truly miss my old friend even if it is not a beauty like the new one.

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