Sex and Grief Pt. 3

Eat up

Monkfish from Rick Stein’s Spain, a show my dad and I watched together.

This is the third part of Sex and Grief, a series exploring my body in grief. Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here. You don’t need to read them before reading this.

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When my dad was dying in the hospice, we watched a lot of TV. An enormous flatscreen television dominated the room he died in, presumably as those who are dying don’t get up much and there is only so many deathbed conversations you can have. The hospice is, at its core, a waiting room for the afterlife.

My dad had a particular preference for cooking shows during this time, something that struck me as peculiar as it had been weeks since he had last eaten a meal. In his dying days, my dad’s appetite leant towards Lucozade and the occasional scoop of vanilla ice cream, the nurse’s sign on his door reading “no food, but ask if he wants anything”. We would sit - him lying in the hospice bed, me sitting in an armchair dragged to his side - and watch every cooking show the BBC had to offer, silently holding hands except for the occasional “that looks nice”.

Pinchos from Rick Stein’s Spain.

When I asked him why he had suddenly got into cooking shows, he simply said “I had wanted to learn how to cook.” And indeed he had - upon his death I flipped through the notebook he kept in the hospital and found recipes he planned to make when he was better. Among them was madeira cake and different kinds of bread. He did not get better and the recipes were not made.

In Anna Bell Kaufman’s poem Cold Solace, she describes finding one of her deceased mother’s cakes:

When my mother died,

one of her honey cakes remained in the freezer.

I couldn’t bear to see it vanish,

so it waited, pardoned,

in its ice cave behind the metal trays

for two more years.

While in the freezer the cake, and therefore her mother, can be between worlds, both living and dead. Unearthing the cake causes time to move forwards and Kaufman to acknowledge that her mother is gone - the last remnants of her life defrost and are absorbed back into the world. Her mother is dead, the cake is eaten:

The amber squares

with their translucent panes of walnuts

tasted — even toasted — of freezer,

of frost,

a raisined delicacy delivered up

from a deli in the underworld.

I yearned to recall life, not death —

the still body in her pink nightgown on the bed,

how I lay in the shallow cradle of the scattered sheets

after they took it away,

inhaling her scent one last time.

While my father did not leave me with any treats from the underworld’s deli, he did leave me with recipes. Since his death (three months already!), I have begun to cook. I am limited by my studio kitchenette and cannot bake the cakes or breads he had listed. Instead I learn to fry onions properly, waiting for the pan to heat, the oil to drift on its surface, the onions sizzling then browning into a softness. I chop garlic bulbs into fine, tiny pieces until my fingers smell. I learn how to make couscous with vegetable stock and cook it until it’s as light and fluffy as snow.

I face the same problems as Kaufman: I yearn to recall my dad’s life, not death - but the death is still too close. I can still feel his hand squeezing mine for the last time, I can still see his body after he stopped breathing and lay still. There are moments, though, where food reminds me I am alive: when I bite into a fresh bell pepper, or boil pasta just right, or admire the glowing bright colour of turmeric in the pan.

Crab legs from Rick Stein’s Seafood Odyssey.

Food, like sex and dancing, connects you to the world. A good meal is pleasure for pleasure’s sake - why else spend hours over a hob when you could drink a meal replacement shake? Taste and touch bring you back to yourself. It is the here and now, it is your body enjoying itself.

Five days before my dad died, we were watching Rick Stein’s Cornwall. Stein was visiting a Cornish vineyard and I remarked that my favourite drink was expensive red wine. My dad said his was champagne. The next day, he requested that my mum, my sister and I bring a bottle of champagne to the hospice with champagne flutes. We dutifully snuck champagne into the room (alcohol is theoretically against hospice rules) and toasted to his life with him. He said to blame me for his request because I had made him think about champagne. We laughed.

Kaufman writes:

I close my eyes, savor a wafer of

sacred cake on my tongue and

try to taste my mother, to discern

the message she baked in these loaves

when she was too ill to eat them:

I love you.

It will end.

Leave something of sweetness

and substance

in the mouth of the world.

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You can find me on Twitter here. You can contact me at robinccraig@gmail.com.