This is a poem which is based on an experience I had - when we had to sell our home, due to the failure of my husband's business, when his business partner was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The 'story' is partially fictionalised, but inspired by our true story.
Memorable Meal
They sit amongst cardboard boxes and rubbish sacks,
dirty crockery stacked on granite work-tops,
take-away containers, half-eaten plates of Sri-Lankan food.
One final meal in the home they have taken twenty years
to create, hastily eaten with friends… come to help
dismantle their life: take it apart piece by piece, like the
old wardrobe, now lying with hinges unscrewed and bolts undone,
dishevelled, displaced, in a heap on the kitchen floor.
She clenches her eyelids in a futile attempt to stop the tears
as she sorts through her children’s toys, throws her
daughter’s drawings away, her son’s first pair of shoes,
trying not to tear his favourite posters as she removes
them from the room where he was born, their lives
destroyed by the words: ‘six months to live’…
Future plans discarded, memories and treasures
hurriedly packed away, perhaps to be resurrected one day.
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Very moving Helen. So glad to be connecting with where you are going.
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