The chair...

The chair...  A few weeks ago I bought a fancy electric reclining chair for my mom to use here in Utah.  With a simple hand-held control, the chair's back could be moved anywhere from lying almost flat to sitting up straight.  Likewise, a footrest could be placed at any desired angle.  On top of all that, the seat would rise high enough to stand you right up, and then go back down to normal chair height.

Mom never had a chance to use that chair.  The day after we set it up, she was admitted to the hospital, and she never returned to her independent living apartment.  After she died, we owned this very useful chair - but nobody in the family had any need of it.  What to do?

After some thought, I decided that mom would want us to find someone who could use it - preferably someone local, or a veteran ... or both.  I've come to know my predominantly LDS community well enough to know there's a good way to search for someone in need of particular help: the bishop of the ward we live in (Paradise ward 2).  

So I called our bishop and explained the situation to him.  A few days later he called back to tell me that he couldn't find anyone in ward 2 - but the bishop of ward 3 had a great candidate: Roy and Maxine M., whose house is less than a mile from ours.

Last night my brother Scott and I picked up the chair from mom's apartment and delivered it to Roy and Maxine.  We had the pleasure of getting to know them a bit - mom would have called them "salt of the earth", and she'd have liked them.  Roy has a number of physical challenges, and that chair will be a big boon to him.  Furthermore he has back surgery scheduled for next week, and he'll be unable to bend his back for a few weeks - making the chair a very timely gift for him.

Roy is local, and he's also a veteran.  Mom would have loved it that we found someone like him to give her chair to.  On the short drive home from Roy and Maxine's place I had a big smile on my face - it felt so right for mom's chair to be there for Roy...