The Interior Decorator Within

From Aman Batheja, Fort Worth, Texas:

John always made sure of finding ways to help friends out, even when they didn't ask for it. When I first moved to Fort Worth, I had an empty apartment I needed to furnish. Without missing me a beat, John told me to take his couch. He said he was getting a new one and needed to get rid of the old one in a hurry. I offered again and again to buy it from him but he kept telling me I was actually doing him the favor by taking his perfectly good slightly-used couch off his hands.
That was three years ago. A few months back, John stopped by my home (different apartment, same couch) and dropped off some more furniture including a wood table, a mirror, a frame and two wooden crosses. He never explained why he was giving us these beautiful items but he said he wanted to get rid of them and thought we'd like it.
Now that John's gone, I look around my home filled with John's generous cast-offs. I think he may have missed his calling as an interior decorator.

One of my last memories of John: He sent me a card two about a week before he died. He was still recovering from his latest surgery but seemed optimistic about getting the transplant and a fresh start. In the card, he wrote, "One thing I keep telling myself is that it doesn't matter how one falls down, but how one gets up."