When someone dies, make soup

I was chopping lemongrass for soup I was making for my soon to arrive dinner guests when I got the phone call. “Shirley died”, my friend said.“NO SHE DIDN’T”, I yelled a little too loudly. My inside voice was saying ‘I just saw her 4 days ago, remember? She was the one in the chair opposite us? Waxing not so poetically about a troubling work situation? She was angry, she was passionate, she was only 41!’

“NO SHE DIDN’T”, I shouted again, in case my friend had missed it the first time. “She died, Alison. On Thursday. It was sudden, it was unexpected. Her daughter found her. It remains unexplainable, but it’s the truth. I’ll call you when I know about the funeral.”

Up until now, I had only looked death in the eye when my beloved 92 year old grandmother passed away - but she was old and sick and I got to hold her hand one last time. I had looked death in the eye when my husband and I put down our beautiful old dog, on a crisp September day that seemed like any other. She was old and sick too – and I cried and cried when we lost her.

But I had never had death reach through the phone lines and grab me by the throat until I couldn’t breath. I was too shocked to feel. I was too shocked to cry. This happened to other people, left other friends grieving. I was numb. I wandered around the house looking for something that wasn’t there. I went to my massage therapist. I went to the gym. I sat in the hot bath until it got cold. I went to yoga. Because now that ache in my throat had become a knot in my back so painful I could hardly brush my teeth. My grief was lodged so firmly in between my shoulder blades that I figured only hours of downward dogs, sun salutations and savasanas could release it. It didn’t.

I was not equipped to handle this new reality, this kind of grief, so after trying unsuccessfully to reach someone who would ‘oh honey’ me (it was a Saturday night after all), I did what I do best – I made soup.

I scoured my cookbooks to find recipes I had ingredients for because I couldn’t face a trip to the grocery store. (Thank god I had just been to Costco and bought two cases of chicken stock). One thing about making soup is that it takes a lot of chopping. And when you chop you have to pay attention to what you’re doing, which means you’re not thinking about much else. Like friends dying. You get into a rhythm of chopping, grinding, sautéing, simmering, salting, spicing, tasting, pureeing, chopping, mincing…

Soup is warm and comforting and makes me feel connected to the world. Soup makes me feel cared for. It makes me feel like everything will be alright. When I was growing up we ate a lot of soup for dinner. I don’t know if it was because it was the 1960s and liberated moms had better things to do. Or if it was because there were 6 of us kids, only a year apart, and my mom was too exhausted to make anything else. Or whether she was dealing with her own silent grief about life, but had to keep going, keep being a mom, and maybe needed comforting herself. Either way, soup brought us together and became a big part of my culinary comfort zone; now it’s serving a new purpose.

For the next few days, every time one of my sisters or girlfriends called, I was making soup. I made so much soup, I filled my fridge. I filled the fridge at work. I gave it away to the neighbors. And then it happened. I cried.

I cried for the girls who would never have their mom to ‘oh honey’ them. I cried for the fiancée who’s dreams are left hollow, like an empty suitcase. I cried for the sister who wished she hadn’t been so estranged this past year. I cried for the parents who sat on opposite sides of the funeral chapel, suffering in silence. I cried for the best friend who spoke so eloquently about a friendship that was unbreakable, almost. I cried for my HOPE sisters, who face their own tenuous mortality every single day. And I cried for me. Because I never got to see her dance to those songs they played at her funeral. I never got to know my friend beyond our cancer survivor meetings every Monday night. I never got to know about her life, her loves, her favorite music. I never got to really know her until after she died. And no amount of soup can ever change that. I love you Shirley.

Swimming with Eduardo

On an eve of Christmas that seemed like any other, a beautiful human being looked out at the sea, dreamt his last dream and went gently into that good night. Not something you expect to discover when you visit your old friends at their beach house Christmas morning.

‘Donde es Eduardo’ was greeted by a silence that said more than words ever could have. Death had visited this house, perhaps randomly, perhaps not. And very very recently, we were to discover. The grieving family, upon sharing the news, were obviously saddened by their loss. But sad in a way that made us think the death had occurred quite some time ago. The Spanish/English language barrier and subsequent linguistic paralysis on our part obviously contributed to our misunderstanding. But what really caught us off guard was how accepting the family was with death in their midst. A cultural perspective? Perhaps. A spiritual belief? More likely. But as we sat down that morning over coffee, we talked about the 2 years since we had last seen this wonderful family, our own recent wedding and made plans for the day ahead of us. This death was not about loss – it was about life, and we were going to learn a valuable life lesson.

It was only when Ric and Jose, were bobbing in the ocean together that enlightenment came. ‘We’re swimming with Eduardo’, Jose said, as he proceeded to tell Ric how they had spread his brother-in-law’s ashes over the Manzanillo Bay that he loved. About the same time, I was getting a similar story from Norma, Eduardo’s sister, while we sat under the sombrilla on the beach in front of their rented casa. ‘He just fell asleep and never woke up again,’ she said. ‘And we decided to stay here because this was where he loved to be.’ In our culture we don’t talk about death like it’s an old friend we haven’t seen for awhile. We avoid it, avoid thinking about it, pretend it’s never going to happen and look the other way when it does. Even when we glimpse our own mortality, it’s from a distance, with lots of denial between us.

So the beautifully inspiring thing about this particular death was in watching the family continue on with the rhythm of their lives as if it never happened. Not in a ‘denial’ or ‘disrespectful of the dead’ sort of way. But in an accepting that ‘death is a part of life and is going to happen to all of us’ sort of way. With great gusto they cooked the food they loved, drank the wine that pleased them, making frequent and often funny toasts to the deceased. They talked of him as if he had just popped back into the house to use el bano. This family was not debilitated by their loss. They laughed. They sang. They made plans for the future. They appeared to ‘see’ their brother, their uncle, in every waking moment and were happy that he died so peacefully, in a place he loved so well.

I only knew Eduardo for a short time but his love of life was infectious. It is obvious he lives on in the people he has physically left behind. And I for one am glad to have a tiny piece of him.

 
So perhaps when Death comes a-knockin at my door, I’ll take a page out of the Sanchez/Perez family book and invite him in, mix us both a whiskey Pandita and ask him ‘where to next, big guy’. Hopefully it’ll be swimming with Eduardo.