The gaps of grief and the food we eat

Sometimes I really miss my fucking friend. Deeply, adoringly, without measure or decency. There are days when I look around at all the connections I’ve managed to cobble together through the years and it still seems insignificant. Even joy and the thrill of newness—those moments when I do indeed feel seen, held and heard by others—can’t placate profound grief. 

Last week was her birthday. If she was still alive, she would’ve been 37. One way I’ve been able to make peace with the searing pain of grief anniversaries—whether it be the day your beloved transitioned to another realm, their birthday, other days of note or importance to them and your relationship—is to wrap ritual around them. I start thinking weeks in advance how I’d like to honor them. And as I’m sure you’ve guessed, my rituals for remembering and honoring my dead are rooted in food. 

For my friend, I think back to the last few times I saw her alive, sometime in the earlier part of 2017, before her death at the end of summer. She was a pescatarian and so when I invited her over to cook for her and catch up, I had to make some adjustments to my menu. I settled on a veggie forward charcuterie with lots of fruit, veg, crackers and garden vegetable cream cheese. The main course was shrimp scampi. Every year, I endeavor to recreate that same meal. It is my way of feeling closer to her as the years lengthen and the distance grows between the last time I saw her. 

But this year was decidedly different. I thought and distantly prepared, not bothering to think about what items I needed to pull this dish off. And when the day of her birthday came, I felt so plunged in sadness with no desire to cook or eat that it confused me. It’s been seven years. My grief for her, the longing to see and feel the tangible presence of my friend again, is so much quieter than it used to be. Why all of sudden did it feel like I was plunged back into the depths of grief without warning? 

Time. The passing of time. How it builds up upon one another as the days, weeks, months and years pass, hardening the rawness of the void. When grief is freshest, when our brains and bodies are calculating how to make sense of this new normal, everything hurts. Our grief and our mourning is hot to touch. We radiate pain at the semblance of any grief trigger or reminder, spiraling us back to where we were when we first started grieving. There’s no logic or reason to this; it simply is. Grief can renew itself over and over again, changing form even, mystifying us in the process. 

While ignoring my annual grief ritual in preparing a meal for my dear friend, I got stuck in thinking about all the time that had passed since her death. How there are endless versions of me that have come into being since she died. How, in some sense, she wouldn’t know the me I am now because it’s such a distinct shift due to grief. And I pondered how different she would’ve been if she was still walking this earth. Would we still be friends? Would she and her partner have the children she told me she was ready to have? What life experiences could she have shared with me? In thinking of all the time, I thought about how time had taken so much, now including both of my parents.

That realization brought me to a dark place where tears poured out of me for hours. Time can be relentless and forceful. But also true. Time will continue to pass, unspooling whatever internal narrative or expectations we project upon it. In both an urging to understand and hold our grief, we get closer to seeing time as precious and fleeting as it is. We’re less likely to cling to what wants to be released. We relax into what is already slipping away and we hold closer those things that aren’t. There is a certain clarity that swaps with the rawness that lessens as time flows forward. 

Grief has taught me these things and so much more. But it is the ritual of using food in that process that feels personal to me. My friend was my friend. A sister, a dear confidante, someone I could share my soul with who deeply understood living with complex trauma due to complicated family dynamics. Often, we met at restaurants around Atlanta, her usually being late as hell which deeply annoyed me, and talked through life over meals and drinks. 

Her wisdom felt like a balm to my spirit, in a world where I felt chronically misunderstood as a baseline. Food was at the nexus of our relationship—how we connected and convened. We shared so many meals. We shared so many laughs. We shared so much of our lives. 

In setting the table each year on her birthday, I am trying to get that same feeling back in a persistent form of grief-fueled desperation. I know my howling to the moon at her won’t feel good enough. And I know that even setting the table in that same way with the same things in the same way that it happened years ago won’t keep the tears away. I’m not delusional enough to think I could will her back. Grief somehow keeps me laced to this annual convening of the void, hoping it’ll feel less dense. 

So no, I never did make that shrimp scampi. But I cried enough tears to build a brand new grief tributary. Guess that’ll have to be enough, until next year when I try again. 

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