May 9, 2025
My father is in the kitchen cooking dinner. Pots are banging, and the peas are overflowing. I ask him for the fifth time when dinner will be ready. ‘When it is in front of you’ he says.
Now the kitchen is empty and I am alone at the dinner table. Grief is the only thing in front of me. I am not ready. I wish you had of asked me if I was ready.
I am alone at this table and I am not ready. Patience is not his virtue and grief is setting the table but I am not ready to say goodbye. I wish you had waited till I was ready.
And in a whisper, I hear my father say ‘but here it is, in front of you. Grief does not wait for dinner to be served before it takes a seat at the table.’
— Hannah Green, ‘Knocking On Heavens Door.’