The Orange Sofa

When I first met my late partner/fiancee Sue Ashe on a dating app, she lived in Garner, North Carolina, about 30 miles from my home in Durham. It was just Sue and her ever-loving cat Malcolm in what the residential complex’s property management company called an apartment home.

Like Sue herself, her living space was unassuming yet filled with character. It was modest, cozy, and aesthetically pleasing. Lots of her carefully selected art hung up on its walls, everything from a Georgia O’Keeffe print to an Old Crow Medicine Show gig poster to a painting of a smiling devil girl with the caption “Cute as Hell.”

For our third date, Sue invited me to her place for the first time (a personal rule of hers – you don’t tell a guy where you live or host him there until you’ve vetted him over at least two dates out in public). She had me over on a Sunday afternoon in late October of 2022 to watch the Jordan Peele movie Get Out. Her main living room sitting furniture was a well-worn orange sofa that was frayed from Malcolm using it as a scratching post. We got settled on the couch and Malcolm got right to business by jumping into my lap, to check me out. Sue leaned into me and I put my arm around her shoulder. Before the movie finished, we had our first kisses, which were a little tentative but sweet. I was 57, Sue 53. With three broken marriages in our collective past, we’d both had serious doubts as to whether we could find romantic happiness again. But something was building here.

We spent a lot of time on that couch over the next 10 months. By Thanksgiving, Sue and I knew we were right for each other and were a committed monogamous couple who had both deleted our dating app profiles. We started spending large chunks of every weekend at her place (it was nicer than mine), from Saturday afternoon after I dropped my tween daughter Melody at my ex’s until Monday morning when I had to drive back to Durham for work.

Sue and I made out on that tattered but comfy orange sofa, watched loads of movies and TV series while sitting on it side by side, did couples’ workbook exercises from the couch. We had some disagreements and other kinds of strained experiences while sitting there, too, like when I suffered a severe mental breakdown in the spring. Sue courageously and loyally stuck with me through my psychological crisis.

Sue and I, along with Melody (who was there for half of each week), our dog Boba, and Malcolm moved into a large house in Durham at the end of summer 2023. Sue bought a much bigger sofa to help furnish our new home. The orange couch went into a seldom-used spare room, its main purpose now to hold things like Sue’s crafting supplies.

Sue died suddenly on January 23^rd of this year. By then, we were engaged to be married. It was early afternoon that Friday and we were heading out to do some emergency supplies shopping ahead of a severe winter storm we were expecting. She had a massive stroke, of which neither of us had any idea she was at risk. One moment, we were in our upstairs bedroom, agreeing that we’d put in an online order for Jersey Mike’s sandwiches we’d pick up while we were out. Her demeanor and speech were perfectly normal at that time. Around 20 minutes later, she was sprawled out on the floor of our garage, surrounded by emergency personnel. She’d felt a little dizzy while walking down the stairs and through the house, then abruptly collapsed while getting into the passenger seat of the car. I held her hand throughout our walk from the stairs to the garage, was still holding it just before she let go to ease herself into her seat. The stroke hit and took her life while I made my way around to the driver’s side. The EMTs got there within a few minutes of my 911 call but they were unable to revive her.

Over the next several weeks, Sue’s (grown) kids and I worked at the physically grueling, emotionally painful process of going through her things. She had a lot of stuff, and we had to decide which of it one of us wanted to keep, what could be sold or donated, and what should be trashed.

One item that I decided to get rid of was the orange sofa. I was going to have to move to a smaller residence and couldn’t justify keeping two couches. Since the aged piece of furniture was too beaten up to try and sell or to offer to a thrift store, I arranged for the city to haul it away as part of a bulk trash pickup.

The day before it was to be taken to the dump, I went into the spare room and sat on the orange sofa. It was the first time I’d set myself down on it in nearly two-and-a-half years. I spontaneously fell into a deep crying fit as I felt my body settle onto that old couch. Since Sue died, when I cry about her what comes out of me sounds primal, noises a wounded animal would make out in the wild. I had never cried in that feral manner before her death but now such episodes are common for me. I stayed on the couch for what might have been an hour, wailing.

While sitting on the sofa, I pictured that first time Sue and I were on it together. I remembered those initial gentle, cautious kisses we shared. I reflected on how the first thing we always did when I got to her place in Garner on a Saturday afternoon through late 2022 and the first two thirds of ‘23 was to plop down on that couch and just hold each other for a while before discussing our weekend plan. I pictured us sitting there and exchanging gifts on our first Christmas together, mentally revisited how Sue cried happy tears when she read the love letter I included with my presents for her. I saw a vision of our first New Year’s Eve as a couple, when we cuddled up on that couch while watching a “Twilight Zone” marathon, then laughed so hard when Sue, who was high on gummies, tried to blow out an electric lamp after blowing out the lit candles that surrounded us.

Saying goodbye to the orange couch was just one extraordinarily raw moment of immense sadness among so many that have signified me saying goodbye to Sue. I cried when I carried the sofa out to the curb before going to bed the night before it was to be picked up. I cried the next morning as I watched the city employees use their mechanical claw to grab it and lower it into their truck’s mouth.

The sofa was like Sue in a sense: modest yet vibrant. And at the time that it was hauled away, it was like me: damaged and holding so many memories.