OF MY MOTHER'S FOOD & KNITTING

Last night, as I curled up in my bed, with blocked nose and headache, more than your soft and tender touch, I was missing something else about you. I was missing eating the food you used to make. It struck so deep and so sudden - the realisation that I will never be able to taste anything made by you. I can still eat the things you loved to cook and the things you loved to eat. But it's never the same. Even the most simple dish I treasure like a mad, hungry man who never had anything to eat at all. I guess I never thought I could be or would ever be emotional about food. I know I am.

I can now completely understand why sister follows the same methods as you did while cooking. She makes sure she uses the same ingredients... chopping, grinding, cutting them just like the way you always did. I can understand her efforts to cling onto and to stick to every little ounce of your memory she has in her. To never let you go in the way she lives.

Maybe that's also the reason why I think fondly of knitting, having learned to do so while quietly watching you after dinner with the different colours of wool lying on the floor next to you. I still have with me the muffler we knitted together which is almost unwearable due to its length. Perhaps we knew that it would become one of the last few moments we would be able to spend together and didn't want it to end.

Love