JIMMY'S PILLOW

"Kitty Alarm Clock," by James Aschbacher

It traveled West across the Rockies like the pioneers.

Along with two cats, one girlfriend, his collection of classical music albums, and a few plaid flannel shirts, James arrived in Santa Cruz from his Midwestern roots with perhaps his most prized possession stashed in the back of his Ford Econoline van: his pillow. He he’d had it so long, he couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t have it. Certainly it dated back to his childhood as little Jimmy in Wilmette, Illinois.

By the time I came into his life, the beloved pillow had already worn through the original outer shell of fabric. We had to keep reinforcing it with several generations of zip-on covers to go under the pillow cases. There was nothing left to cover but a fluffy rectangle of naked cotton batting, slightly stained with age, and with a head-shaped depression in the middle.

But he loved that pillow. For years he would not travel anywhere overnight without it. Hotel pillows were guaranteed to be stuffed with sand in comparison. And musty guest pillows dragged out of the hall closet at his mom’s house? (Or mine?) Oh, please.

Hotel pillows just weren't the same.
But this Bern hotel had a Paul Klee print!

It was one thing to toss it in the back of the van (or the trunk, in subsequent vehicles) if we were driving somewhere, but for years he also managed to squish it into our luggage if we had to fly. This did nothing to protect its crumbling infrastructure, but he was always so relived to have that little piece of comfortable familiarity to cling to in a strange bed. (Well, besides me.)

It probably wasn’t until airports starting charging fees to check your baggage — and it proved impossible to stuff the thing into a standard carry-on bag, and still have room for, like, clothes — that he finally, with extreme reluctance, agreed to leave the pillow at home.

I still make up the bed every week with his pillow, and its mismatched partner, along with my two pillows. I tried banishing his to the (so-called) guest room closet, but the bed just seems too flat and empty without them. Besides, Bella the Cat likes to take a midday nap in that hollowed-out spot when it’s not sunny enough for her to go out on the deck. Pillow-snuggling used to be verboten to the kitties, since James was so allergic, but there have been a few changes around here since then.

On the night I came home from the ICU for the last time, I fell asleep with Bella snuggled up against my rib cage, as we had done for the previous two nights. When I woke up in the middle of the night, she wasn’t there. I saw that she had gone over to go curl up on his pillow, kind of a last goodbye.

Now there’s a new chapter in the lengthy saga of Jimmy’s Pillow. Lately, I’ve been using it as a kind of bolster between my knees in bed at night; it helps me relax if my leg is doing one of those internally buzzy MS nerve things. I have to admit, it’s a great comfort to curl up around its saggy familiarity.

Now I get it.