8:183) Hope O'Keeffe 23-APR-98 16:37

One by one, I wrestle them to the curb: six upholstered armchairs, a daybed, two mattresses, a boxspring, two campbed frames, some curtains and rods. These are the ones that the local furniture bank, the one that provides furniture to newly-unhomeless families, didn't want. They are dusty, worn, ripped, with fifty or more years of living in them. I remember when, after Grandfather died, the family all gathered in the small living room, eating deli provided by the place down the street that Grandfather helped finance because they had proper thick boiled Irish corned beef instead of that transparent New York stuff. There, in the center, Grandfather's chair. There were perhaps thirty of us there, sons and daughters and grandchildren and friends, mostly stnading, a few on the couch around Grandmother, a few on the dining room chairs. But no one else had ever sat in Grandfather's chair, and it sat, empty, all afternoon, yearning for a good cigar, three or four newspapers to swear at, and a lightly chilled manhattan.

I sit on the porch, watch the forlorn chairs, all lined up along the sidewalk for tomorrow's trash pickup, hope that some one of my neighbors will take them home. A homeless-looking man and woman pushing a shopping cart that already has a scavenged chair stop by and look them over, take only the curtains.

I think about Grandfather.