It must be almost two years since one of my closest friends was ruthlessly dispatched in a tussle between loving nostalgia and the crushing wheels of ‘progress’.
As a youngster my mother bought me a pillow which surpassed all others for comfort, personality and, ultimately, faithfulness. The secret lay in its incomparable, unadulterated filling: thousands of tiny sponge fragments ripped to perfection, and lovingly sewn inside a sturdy cotton skin.
This pillow became my constant companion. While other pillows were unyielding and rubbery, or spineless and flab, my constant companion was both malleable and sinewy – like the velvet-and-steel man so many women long to find.
This was a pillow that could be bent and moulded without being broken, a pillow that could be taken on camps, conferences, overseas trips – with a sense of pride.
But all good things must come to an end. Eventually, through many years of head-banging, bending, sweating, drooling and snoring, my constant companion became threadbare and then incontinent: its precious contents began to leak out of the once-impervious cotton skin.
They say with trees that when they are young their amenity is low, and their maintenance cost high. Slowly, their amenity increases, while their maintenance cost decreases, and they become a decided asset. Eventually, the lines cross again, and a once-glorious tree turns from an asset into a liability, never to return to the right side of the ledger again.
My wife saw my pillow as a tree in decline, ripe for the executioner’s chainsaw. I saw it differently; this was like the old tree that has become home to the owl, the possum and the orchid. Is it really a liability? Or is it simply longing to be appreciated on new terms?
Cara had always been on uneasy terms with my faithful pillow. To me, it was ‘Old Trusty’; to Cara ‘Old Trusty’ without the ‘T’ – a feral, unremitting source of bedtime aggravation.
Sadly, this last, most glorious phase of my pillow’s life was to be short-lived. Piece-by-piece, the decline was inevitable. Eventually, I was left with half a pillow; the other half dispersed through our bedsheets, under the mattress, in the washing machine.
It was my wife who finally took ‘Old Trusty’ out the back, hung it over the garbage bin, and compelled it to perform seppuku. After more than 20 years' of trust and commitment, it was over. Auf wiedersehen, mein Freund.
These memories were reinvigorated last night as I was cruising through McSweeney’s ‘Open letters to people or entities who are unlikely to respond’. My heartstrings were tugged and then snapped by the callousness of this piece.
Such disrespect cannot go unanswered.
So I raise my glass and, with a teary eye, share
An ode to ‘Old Trusty’: faithfulness despite disembowelment
From antiquity you have been
Faithful, constant, resilient, lumpy
Your rusty exterior I loved
Undying until your undignified interment
Through the joyous years of childhood
The troubled, lean years of adolescence
You rolled with the punches, absorbed the drool
And always came back for more
Yours was a rare glory
The coffee colour of an ancient treasure map
You were yang to my ying,
And pong to my ping
You aged with dignity, declined with honour
But some would not see
Your inner beauty
Emancipated the more by your threadbare state
Now and again I find peace
A piece of your once-glorious interior
Swept into a corner, jammed in the spine of a bedtime book –
A diamond in the [domestic] rough
Know you are not forgotten, that you are missed
That my packed suitcase still mourns your spongy absence
Know that what we had was special
And that my arranged marriage to your replacement leaves me cold
Do you have a friend like this? Perhaps an old teddy, a blanket, a dented tobacco tin? How is it that a relational being can get so attached to something inanimate, and monetarily worthless?
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