Am I the only person who still has a chunk of Christmas cake left by the third week of March? It's moist and delicious and I don't want it to end so I refuse to serve it to visitors (I'm sure they're delighted!) I allow myself a wee nibble now and again. I don't want it to finish this year. Ridiculous I know, but dad enjoyed a small slice a few days before he died in January and somehow, when the cake is gone.... another link to him is too. We've had seven weeks without him and slowly, steadily, his mark on our home is fading. There will be a day when there is no more Christmas cake... no last jar of his delicious windfall apple jelly... or pots of his favourite peppermint tea - we drink it, but not often, so I can't imagine any more will be bought when this packet is finished.
I've found myself burying my face in his jumpers in the hope of a remembered smell.
All the efficient practicality of the hours and days after he died have passed now too. I fooled myself into thinking I was ok. I was for a while. A funeral attended by around 450 people went like clockwork; warm, affectionate and tearful but with laughter and his favourite hymns - two of which he and I sang the day before he left us - he croaking from his pillow and me doing my best with a lump the size of everest in my throat.
The paperwork... policies.... banks.... legal matters - some relating to his older, bewildered sister who
is now my responsibility... And some for my mother all processed, organised and in order. Now I've lifted my head I wonder where everyone has gone? We'd several hundred people in our home over the five days between his passing and his funeral... and I breezed through - 'coping', dealing with, arranging.. Now? Now I cry at the sight of a slice of Christmas cake and a pot of apple jelly.
I need to knit I think. Socks. New challenges.
