After Maria's memorial last week, Paul and I were sitting in Sabra's yard, sipping drinks and watching the others dive into the food. Paul turned to me and asked, "Ma, will you just come and look at furniture with me?" I knew just what he was talking about. They all want me to get rid of my couch.

I bought the couch and the gray reclining chair (which they also want me to get rid of) 24 years ago when Maria was pregnant with Rachael. We went to Sears together and she helped me pick the couch out...a light brown fuzzy couch, with three cushions and fashionable buttons decorating and forming the cushions and the back of the couch. 24 years is a long time, but I love this couch. It fits me like a glove.

Other people have remarked on the couch. When my brother visits he tries to avoid it because of the difficulty in rising from it...you kind of sink in. And it was even featured in a film that Sabra made for me, called My Crazy Family. The segment on the couch is titled "Defending the Couch" and is simply Laura, Sabra and myself (sitting on the couch) talking about it. It goes something like this:

Laura: Ma just wants to keep the couch because Emily (the cat) died on it.

Me: No, Emily died on the chair, she jumped up and her claws got caught, and that did her in.

Sabra: How about the time the rat was hiding his food in the couch?

(Several years ago we had a varmint in the house that was stealing cherry tomatoes off the kitchen table. I accused Timmy and he really couldn't deny it, because sometimes at night he just eats anything he can get his hands on. Anyway, I was looking for something that might have slipped in the couch, and my hand came in contact with something soft...the cherry tomatoes. Sure enough, soon after we caught a rat in a hav-a-heart and that was that story.)

Me: That was years ago, and nobody else has hidden food in the couch since.

Laura: It just looks so bad Ma.

Me: Well, how about Timmy's gym shorts hanging over the stove, the hanger attached to a family picture? Or the paper plate that is covering the old stove pipe hole? Or, those awful curtains that I got from Mary because she couldn't pay rent?

Laura piping in: Or the lawn furniture I'm stting in. (A director's chair, another rent payment from Mary.)

Sabra: But what happens when people come to visit?

Me: Who ever comes here but you people? And, do you think if I called Angelo (my neighbor, now in Heaven), asking him to come over he would say, "I'd come over but you have THAT COUCH.

It's pretty funny dialogue and was made that many years ago. I remember when they were going to deliver the couch and chair. Kevin's cousin came over to take the old couch (that was in pretty bad condition), but he and his wife carried it out like it was a treasure. Sabra was probably about 16 then, and she said sadly "I had a lot of good times on that couch" and I added "Me, too" , just as sadly. That's what it is about the couch. I sit on it every morning, put on the news and drink my first cup of coffee. At night I eat supper on the couch, drinking a beer and go from the couch to the bed. A nice full rotation...bed...couch...bed. Every one of my grandchildren (except Jer and Liz) has taken a nap on it, sat on it and laughed. Our last memory of Maria is sitting on that couch with Solomon, laughing about cheese farts the afternoon before she died.

So, unless somebody sets the couch on fire, or something terrible lives in it, I think it can make a few more years..at least until Rachael is 30.