Imagining One Last Lunch with My Father, John Cheever

Susan Cheever imagines a final meal with her father:

The promise of barbecued spare ribs routed any misgivings I might have had about seeing my father again, though I hadn’t met with him—outside of dreams—since he went and died on me back in the spring of 1982.
I was surprised and pleased by the eagerness with which he accepted my invitation to lunch at the China Bowl, at its original location, 152-4 West Forty-Fourth Street. This social victory was given considerable heft by the theory that the approval of a parent is all a child needs to make her-or-his entire life a triumph. Though the theory is patently false, it’s wildly defended, and even when said child is fully grown and said parent, a feast for worms.
Besides which it’s fun to socialize with the dead because they know so little about what’s happened since they left.

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From One Last Lunch, a collection in which dozens of contributors imagine one last lunch with someone they cherished.