Extreme Chocolate

Sunday 1st April 2012

I wake with stiff aching legs. Must be all that charging up escalators in the Underground, yesterday carrying big bags of biscuits and paper cups and 200 napkins. And racing the wrong way up City Road looking for Wesley’s Chapel. In my heeled boots. Panicking about running out of time. Arriving with less than half an hour to spare, my dress sticking to my back, my face beetroot shiny.

Hurtling down the stairs to the kitchen, ripping open packet after packet of Extremely Chocolatey Biscuits and chucking them on horrible plastic platters. Then discovering that half my wonderful family have already cut up the cakes, laid them out in beautiful lines and organised the tables and the teas. Then the rest of the family arrive and do cheese straw platter arranging and cover everything in plastic bin liners.

Minutes later we are sitting in the full church - then the service begins...... Although I don’t recognise my father in this ornate Victorian building full of stained glass and ritual, I do find him in the words and the poetry of the people who stand up and speak about him with love and gratitude. And in the hearts of all his friends who are sitting in the pews. Which are extremely hard.

Much, much later when it’s all over, we leave the Tongans setting up their food in the hall and stand in a family huddle at Paddington station waiting for our respective trains, dipping into the foil wrapped parcels of left over biscuits in the bags at our feet......taking comfort in extreme chocolate.

Which doesn’t really fill the empty Pa - shaped space in my heart.