The taste of memory

The Sunday after Christmas I visited my frozen father. He didn’t say much. It was cold outside. Afterwards I visited my mother. She asked if I could kill the young roosters. She didn’t know how to do it. My brothers in law weren’t keen on doing it.

I killed animals before. But only small ones in pain. I said yes. Next week. It would take time to catch them.

I drove home. I went to the supermarket to buy groceries for my last meal in the old year. I bought a steak. I usually don’t eat meat.
I am not sure, but I think that is what he would have bought. He loved his meat. And I love the taste of meat too. The steak was delicious.

The beat of my father’s heart. The most beautiful thing I felt in the last year. We counted the last beats without counting. The saddest thing I felt in the last year. In 42 years.

The tastiest thing? Meat again. A sausage. Cut in pieces and rearranged by new friends into the age I had turned that day. 42. In the middle of the night after a party, in a sausage stall along the road across the former salt factory where we worked on an art project. A sausage in memory of my grandmother who used to give me one in the shape of my age when I was a kid.