Inheritance

I’ve been thinking a lot about your dining table
The one you spent weeks, months hunting for.
It has to be big enough, you said,
For all of us.
For the family.

The pride in your smile when you found it
The pictures didn’t do it justice, you said.
It needs a little love, you said, but it’s sturdy.
Enough chairs, enough leaves
For all of us.

That table and all those chairs
Are sitting in a shipping container in a warehouse
Upended. Waiting.
Waiting for the day the whole set will be delivered
Labored and delivered into my new home
Our first home, a house you won’t bless
With endless gifts too generous for comfort
With food carefully plated on the good china
Because that’s what it’s good for.
That table that fed so many
But not me, not yet.
A silence stole a year of visits
A deeper silence stole a lifetime
From all of us.

All that’s left is a turned table
And empty chairs
And waiting.

Until we host the first meal
No china, just a single plate and cup
The only time you let another be
The host
The simplest meal you ever served.
Yet another gift
Given lovingly, lavishly
For all of us.
Presiding over a feast
Of memories
Is my inheritance.

This poem is written in loving memory of the reverend Melissa Lee Kean and in thanksgiving to God for the generosity of spirit that she inherited from her parents, Linda and Bob Kean.