I bought this pumpkin pillow for my mom last year when she moved into her new apartment at the assisted care facility. She smiled when she opened the package, and she kept it displayed on the big, green silk chair in her living room. I recently started going through mom's chest of drawers to donate her clothes to Goodwill, and I found this little guy neatly tucked away. Right next to mom's stack of festive napkins that the assisted care facility used at each holiday meal. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's. She kept them all. And I can't seem to stop petting them, wondering how pieces of paper and a stuffed ball of felt can outlast a person.

Inanimate things are so inconsequential, yet they endure. Like this silly little pumpkin pillow, which I love and hate at the very same time.