Another Sunday Dinner

What I wouldn’t give for another Sunday dinner with Dad. To walk in the family room and see him sitting in his recliner next to my Mom.

He’s watching the Eagles fight for a first down or watching the Phillies get an extra-base hit. Depending on the season, I smell either Mom’s roast beef warming the house or Dad’s barbecued chicken drifting in through the windows. We catch up on the week: How are you feeling, how’s work, how’s everything with the house.

It’s the natural order of things, I guess, but it’s such a sad, strange feeling, the way somebody can be there and then not be there. We were just having Christmas in the same room, unwrapping presents and fawning over the baby.

Sunday dinners go on, of course, with a greeting from Mom and the smell of her roast beef warming me from the chill. The family goes on, too, expanding as my brother and sister-in-law bring my nephew to hold court in the center of the room. After dinner, we do the dishes while Mom sits in the recliner and holds her grandson and smiles.

He won’t remember Pop-Pop and the way he fawned over his grandson for those precious months when they overlapped. But at Sunday dinners, when he’s old enough to appreciate them, we’ll be talking his ear off with plenty of stories about Dad.