The Pressing: Good Food, Good Grief
My due date was supposed to be late last week, which means I would have probably been in labor right about now.
I am always later than my due date.
But I am not in labor. I won’t be. I’m only laboring through the days with a heaviness that won’t lessen with a birth. It is the heaviness of early September. I’ve known it for 15 years and, it seems, I’ll know it for a lifetime.
I don’t know all the science of how a body reacts to trauma. I only know the truth of my own body, my own reactions. Somehow it knows when September rolls around. It knows in its bones, knows in its muscles, its blood and guts. I have carried a physical reaction to September since my brother died of cancer 14 years ago this month. Several years ago another friend died at the hands of a different kind of cancer on the exact anniversary of Ricky’s death. And today that heaviness has settled in as I add the memory of a birth that will not be.
My husband and I discussed the early September heaviness as we returned from a walk near the river yesterday. I told him I was sorry for not being able to feign joy, and for not having a current or tangible reason. He recalled how I responded to Ricky’s death, not emotionally but physically, and how he had never seen someone physically express grief the way he saw it in me. In his words, it was like “watching someone being pressed between two cars.” And I thought, that’s it. It’s a pressing from all directions. I am physically pressed. I feel it now, even as I take client calls and ask how other people are dealing with their personal crises and personal triumphs. I feel it as I plan and write and do my work. I’m pressed as I fight to breathe deeply in my exercise routine, to breathe the air of peace and presence. But the pressing makes it hard to be present.
I’ve written about it before, but it’s worth repeating that another physical manifestation of grief is, for me, a wholehearted return to the kitchen. My brother died, so I made family and friends a scratch-made feast as we reflected on his life and our utter disapproval of it being taken from us. I felt the impending horror of Elinoa’s miscarriage that early morning in February, so I got up and made pancakes, sausage and eggs for the boys, feeling the process beginning as I poured syrup and encouraged a hearty “eat up!”
Something about food forces me to be present in a moment longer than I want to be.
It keeps away the terrible submerge into full-body grief while keeping me near to it somehow. I want to scream, so I make cupcakes instead. I want to collapse, so I cut corn off the cob. I want to shut myself away in the dark with whisky and silence, so I chop onions and add them to garlic and olive oil in a saute pan. I remember process while I cook. I remember process is what brings anything worthwhile. Even the process of grief gets me somewhere I wouldn’t be without it, which I hate because it’s true without my approval.
Last night after the joyless walk along the river, after a long soaking bath and a moment to go numb, I cooked. I brined chicken and washed it in buttermilk and flour with lots of black pepper, and I fried it to perfection. I made buttermilk biscuits and fresh creamed corn. I made black-eyed peas and fried squash. I cooked “country food” as my boys like to call it. It’s the food of my childhood, but not theirs. We don’t fry much in our house, but when early September rolls around, the oil and cast iron make an appearance.
Today, my to-do list is longer than should be allowed for any human. But I needed to leave it for a while to write my insides out. I needed to tell you that the pressing is real but not indefinite. When it shows up with the deep pangs of missing my brother, I will show up with a mixing bowl. When I feel the sadness descend into my very guts as I mourn the missed adventure of knowing and raising a human I never got to meet, I will go to the kitchen for some good food. And good grief.
