Still Feeling Hungry

23rd February 2012 Thursday

Sitting in The Boston Tea Party cafe in Honiton High Street with a dear friend - on the table between us mugs of hot chocolate, a crumbly flapjack, our note pads and pens.We are talking sandwich fillings - egg mayonnaise, brie and cranberry, smoked salmon; we are talking cake decorations - cape gooseberries and lemons; we are talking quantities and table cloths and napkins. We are talking food for the Thanksgiving, next Friday. For maybe a hundred people. From where we are sitting in the window of the cafe I can see the house where my father used to live on the other side of the road.

I’m so grateful to my friend who is doing the lion’s share of this, who knows all about catering for big numbers - for all these people who are coming - some of them a very long way - to honour my father. I want to make sure they don’t go away still hungry - these people who love my father. Getting all busy and bogged down in detail I’ve lost sight of him these last days. On Friday it won’t be the sandwiches they will remember.

Tonight, sitting in a circle of precious people, feeling their tenderness, feeling the love in the music, I’m unravelled again, at a loss ......something about an empty space behind me - no solid wall to lean against......and now no more kingfisher cards coming in the post with my name on the envelope written in black ink. In the familiar, sloping hand writing I’ve know all my life. Still feeling hungry for his words.