His chair

   His vast, blue, ratty recliner is the last place I saw Michael alive. It was the place where I gave his stone cold body desperate and terrible CPR because the 911 lady said I had to.
   Last night in the dark, I hauled it out of the house to the curb and used the 311 app to schedule trash pickup.
   I have tried to repair it for eight months. It LOOKS like it could still be a good chair. But from the Compassion Center fiasco over my dad's sofa, I know that no one wants used furniture with even mild cat scratches on the arms.
   So I had a dream last night. Quite an upsetting dream.
Michael and I were walking into a light and airy, Craftsman bungalow. Big window, white curtains, wood floors: my home.
   He said, “I got you something.” It was a pressed-wood, lighted shelving unit (we used to argue about such things: Where are we living that we must waste electricity to spotlight our knickknacks?).
   It held multiple copies of two or three large ceramic pots, tall ovals, lidded, asymmetrical, with bold and quite attractive figured patterns on black, lemon-green or orange fields.
   "I knew you would like these,” he said, "They came from my mom."
   I wanted to stomp my feet and tell him flatly, "NO, no. I have just spent all this money and so many tears and so much physical effort clearing useless clutter out of my house, I don't want that. Out."
   But this was Michael. And they had not come from his mother's house. They were not her taste. He had picked them out just for me, and I did not want them.

   There will be no end to missing him. I could purge my home of every item that makes me weep, and still I will see him in my dreams.