Danny Rosin

My Dad died 18 months ago. I didn’t create one of those cool memory boards and we did not plant a tree in his honor. But when I visit with my stepmom, new stories of him emerge. As I visited with her, listening, she shared that I was sitting in my father’s actual office chair from his psychiatric practice. I thought about how many patients in need of his help sat across from him sitting in that chair over so many years. Thinking about it made me sit up a little straighter, in deference. She then told me to look under my hands. The varnish on the wooden arms was worn from my Dad’s hands, where, perhaps, he exercised his own anxiety. I can’t even begin to imagine what he heard sitting there.

If this chair could only talk. And if only I could hear my dad’s voice again.