Let it simmer

Or, what the holidays teaches us about grief

Friends—I hate to say this—the holidays snuck up on me once again. Yes, I know that Thanksgiving always falls on the last Thursday of the month and yet I always end up looking at the calendar incredulously as if Hallmark printed the month of November to spite me. As I sit on my sister’s couch, digesting an inhumane amount of Deviled eggs, I will save you some time and tell you what this essay is about. It’s about holidays and memory, which means it’s also about Doris Jean.

It was common knowledge that if you were coming to my grandmother’s house, one thing you weren’t leaving with was an empty stomach. Her door (and her fridge) were always open, so hosting for the holidays just meant raising the stakes. On Thanksgiving, you’d walked in the door with your jacket and scarf (this is before global warming, walk with me) and she would call your bluff and raise you cornbread stuffing and collard greens, steeped in vinegary goodness. With a variety of goods sweet and savory it was dealer’s choice at her table, and you would eventually fold to the macaroni and cheese baked and broiled to perfection or maybe a slice of buttery sweet potato pie.

Widowed with four children under the age of five in her early twenties, she also brought a deepened sense of safety in togetherness she orchestrated. She had been raised by parents and grandparents who had to white-knuckle their own way through a deeply segregated South, with its brushes of poverty, violence, and other racially-tinged indignities. Through her hard work and love for extravagance, she created a holiday haven for us, where our worries tempered on the superficial. We scoured Black Friday coupons and argued whether it was best to leave at 8:30 or 9:30 PM to get in line at Best Buy for a microwave or gigantic TV. We watched football at high volume. On the occurrence that your throat felt raw you could wait a little while and let the vanilla ice cream help swallow down those sorrows and uncertainty. Have pound cake to soften the knot in your stomach.

As she prepared, I knew better than to ask too many questions and learned to stay out of her way as she marched from end to kitchen to the other like a colonel giving invisible orders, squinting over scraps of paper like a map over enemy lines. Yet when she called us to dinner, there was this magical switch that would happen. Her brows would unfurrow, her jaw would relax, and a brightness appeared in her voice as she unveiled what had been stewing, brewing, and baking. Her progeny—and whoever else ended up at her doorstep—would then swoop in, loading up on starches, meats, vegetables until their plates almost caved in.

She passed away a year before I got married. The cancer had gotten to her, had gone right through her until it felt as though the slightest wisp of wind could blow her away. Like, you could lift her up just by looking at her. The greediness it had wreaked on her body was hard to see. Towards the end of her life, I remember coming up to see her and sitting in her kitchen and feeling unsettled as she casually offered me something to eat, with her own appetite barely existent. The irony was cruel and unrelenting.

That first year in my house as a married woman gave me a burst of domesticated energy, to which I opted to wield this newfound power by hosting my mother, older sister, and my two nephews. I made two Cornish hens, macaroni and cheese, green beans, corn bread stuffing, cranberry sauce (from a can but I did open them so that still counts). Her oven had been gifted to me, and I swear, seeing all that food crammed on its racks and on the stovetop made me feel like she had somehow taken over and I was a little girl again, watching. As I raced against the clock, putting finishing touches before my family arrived, I began to understand the nuts and bolts that must have kept her together, the mechanics of her love. “I did it!” I said to myself and almost felt compelled to call her. Then I remembered.

During the holidays grief is the ingredient we subconsciously carry with us but no one particularly asks for. Sometimes we don’t know what to do with it. Someone else will need it, we say when it is only ourselves. I’ll put it here, save it for later. We sit it down and try to forget as we pour punches and try to negotiate one more slice of cake into our bellies. We try to cling to the comforting space of oblivion as we load up the dishwasher, scraping remnants of the party that had one less guest, one less chair. In time, we may learn how to use it, how to let it meld and simmer into the compounds that make up our life and require our participation. We can aspire towards the wisdom that allow us to digest this grief. There is a comfort in that we can let it dissolve into transformation, pushing us to greater version of ourselves. Versions that maybe resemble more of them.