13th January 2012 Friday
While my husband goes to the funeral parlour to see my father’s body, my sisters, my niece, my brother and I all crowd into the florist's and look at pictures of wreaths and flower arrangements to place on top of a wicker coffin. We choose red and burgundy and white - gerbera daisies and carnations and just one lily - lillies push the price up beyond reason.
We choose the words to engrave on the brass plaque for the oak cross which will join the one marking my mother’s grave. Now it will be theirs.
We have lunch in The Boston Tea Party cafe and toast my father in ginger beer and sparkling water.
We walk along soft sinking sand at Sidmouth. The sun lights up the rock pools and we tell each other the stories of my father’s escapades in Sidmouth, and even though the air is very cold we eat ice creams in his honour.
Tonight I’m empty tired - missing my father. I feel like I’ve lost an ally - he got it skew whiff sometimes but he guessed how shitty it is with my husband now and just kept beaming his love on us. And sending me sweet cards with quotes in them in his sloping handwriting. Like this one in a card with a kingfisher on the front,
‘Whatsoever things are true and beautiful, think of these things...’
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