In four months, I will be living someplace else. I don’t
know where and I don’t know how much of my stuff I will be taking with me. And yet,
I’m not especially concerned. One thing I am sure of, I will take my bed.
Nineteen years ago, my daughter, Robin, was murdered and I
took custody of her four and five year old orphaned sons. In those early days, I
felt like a burn victim, seared to my soul with grief and overwhelmed with
responsibility; sleep was elusive.
Thanks to the tender empathy of my cousin, Connie Blair Brehm, for the past nineteen years, my bed has been a refuge, a place where I am comforted from my nearly unbearable pain. Just after Robin’s death, Connie asked if I would like to have Grandma’s bed. It had been in use at her home for the previous five years while she had been the caregiver and guardian of our Aunt Helen, the childless daughter of our mutual grandmother. Helen had moved to assisted memory care and no longer used her bed.
Mental images of the bed and 70 years of memories associated
with it washed over me. I had been in
awe of the towering bedstead that stood in the small bedroom at Atlasta Ranch
in Fallon, Nevada. It dominated the room where my grandfather slept. Although
to my young self it seemed odd, my grandmother slept in a separate bed on the
south porch of the house. The morning of August 2, 1953, while I was spending
summer vacation with my grandparents, my grandfather suffered a fatal heart attack
in that bed. My memories of the sad day are always illuminated with a mental
image of him drawing his final breath. It’s a gentle and comforting image,
graced with thoughts of all that had occurred in that bed which had served
since the marriage of Minnie Pauline Nichols and Ernest William Blair on
December 26, 1908, in Placerville, California.
The bed was purchased at Sloan’s in Sacramento, and shipped
by rail to the first home of the newlyweds in Goldfield, Nevada. Conception and
birth of my Aunt Helen in 1910, and of my father, Seward James “Bud” Blair in
1912, no doubt occurred in that bed while in Goldfield.
The bed and the family moved to Tonopah, Nevada, in 1918. In
1922, their third child, Ernest William “Bill” Blair, Jr. was conceived and
born, though his birth was in a hospital.
In 1924, the household settled on Atlasta Ranch in Fallon,
Nevada. After the death of my grandmother in 1973, the bed remained in Fallon
with Aunt Helen until Alzheimer’s disease overtook her. In 1995, the bed and
Aunt Helen moved to LaVerne, California, to be cared for by cousin Connie and
Dieter Brehm. And there it remained until it was moved to my bedroom in El
Dorado Hills, California.
In the past nineteen years, I have moved five times, always
making sure my bed was the first thing put in place in the new house. And
always, it symbolizes safety, security, refuge, and comfort. The golden glow of
the oak suffuses my room with warmth. The seven foot tall headboard protects me
while the carved and curving acanthus leaves on top symbolize the angel’s wings
of my grandmother watching over and guiding me. The walls around me matter little, I am secure knowing I
can lay myself down in my bed, wherever that may be.
