Herr Meow and I had dinner at the kitchen counter– not at the dinner table.
Everything else was genial: he ate plenty and had good manners, and the food was reasonably okay and balanced.
But as we ate perched on stools at the counter– a slight step above eating right over the sink– it felt so very wrong. It actually made the absence of those who weren’t dining there that much more acute.
Dining on those hard stools –so nice and cheerful in the mornings or at snacktime or any other time of day– is the equivalent of not having that foot next to you at night.
Sometimes I wonder about people who are separated by war, or loss, or other circumstance, and not by a trivial business trip, and I wonder if they pity themselves at least a little bit and look back fondly at the dinner table and feel their heart break just a little bit.
So just know that today I thought of you. And maybe by so doing, we were all a little less lonely.
A Daily Dose of Zen Sarcasm! 
Love this post. I really like it when I can just visualize the scene like I was there.