Two weeks after Dad died in a car accident, a huge package arrived from Honolulu.<\/p>\n
Mom saw the label and immediately begged me to throw it away.<\/p>\n
I opened it anyway.<\/p>\n
Inside was an old blue wooden chair. Beneath the seat, one word had been carved into the wood:<\/p>\n
GILBERT.<\/strong><\/p>\n Dad\u2019s name.<\/p>\n Mom finally revealed that Dad had spent part of his teenage years with a foster family in Hawaii. Their house was crowded, but that blue chair became his place at the kitchen table.<\/p>\n When Dad left Hawaii at twenty, he planned to return.<\/p>\n He never did.<\/p>\n Years passed, and eventually he became too ashamed to go back, convinced he had waited too long.<\/p>\n But his foster family never forgot him.<\/p>\n Mom had secretly contacted them months earlier and asked them to send the chair, hoping it would finally convince Dad to return home.<\/p>\n The package was shipped three days before his accident.<\/p>\n He never saw it.<\/p>\n I found a Hawaii phone number on the box and called.<\/p>\n A woman named Ruth answered. She had grown up with Dad.<\/p>\n I told her he always believed he had stayed away too long.<\/p>\n Ruth became quiet.<\/p>\n \u201cWere you angry with him?\u201d Mom asked.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes,\u201d Ruth admitted.<\/p>\n Then she said the words that broke us:<\/p>\n \u201cI still would\u2019ve picked him up at the airport.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n A week later, I placed Dad\u2019s blue chair at my own kitchen table.<\/p>\n Some places never stop saving you a seat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two weeks after Dad died in a car accident, a huge package arrived from Honolulu. Mom saw the label and immediately begged me to throw it away. I opened it anyway. Inside was an old blue wooden chair. Beneath the seat, one word had been carved into the wood: GILBERT. Dad\u2019s name. Mom finally revealed …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10254,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10252\/revisions\/10254"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}