Jagged. That’s what I would rename myself if I was Cheryl Strayed from Wild. She renamed herself after she’s strayed from her life and was unfaithful to her marriage when all the while she couldn't grief the process of losing her mom, her best friend. My name would be Alice Jagged. I lost a lot.
Rough, Ragged, and Neglected was who I was given as friends to walk with me from my early years. They helped me survived my parents' divorce and many horrible things that happened thereafter. They protected me. They taught me to become self-reliant.
My grandmother was a first I remembered to be a character of warmth and strength to me. She loves making real authentic Chinese food for me and my sister. I lost her five years ago and a few years before then to Alzheimer's. It’s been more than 10 years since I’ve had pineapple flavored coated spareribs with her.
I cried. I cried at her funeral. I cried at her burial. I cried as I walk by the cemetery. It almost seemed like my grief plateaued. But deep down I fear that I am beginning to lose my memories with her.
A friend took her own life three weeks ago. She was 27 and was grappling with one of life’s most vulnerable questions, “Could I be fully known and yet fully loved?” I then adopted that question for myself. I know, I am known and loved. My grandmother was one of those who knows how strong I am and how soft I am, because I take after her.
I unpacked and found a cookbook my mom used when we were growing up. I have decided to spend this year grieving my losses from which I ran from in the past. I will be cooking 20-30 recipes out of this cookbook and will write about my losses as I remake these dishes. This is me pursuing wholeness, me pursuing self discovery, me pursuing a good relationship with food, me pursuing God. My blog is called, The Culinary Contemplative.
Madeleine L’Engle described her thoughts on C.S. Lewis’ grief for losing his wife as, “He had been invited to a great feast and the banquet was rudely snatched away from him before he had done more than sample the hors d’oeuvres.” I didn’t grow up knowing I was known and well loved. I was a child rough, ragged, neglected, left alone, my grandmother’s warmth was like a feast to me. When she died, it felt like an amputation. It felt like it was time to wake up to the pain. It felt like it was time to face all the darkness from the past.
To commemorate her, this year, I made pineapple flavored coated spareribs. The recipe called for 2 hours of marinating with water and baking soda to tenderize the pork. My impatient version quickly turned into 20 minutes of marinating! Deep fry the spareribs. When you deep fry something, you are liquefying the fat. You are sealing the surface quickly and locking moisture and liquid flow inside. Therefore it is crispy on the outside and cooked right through on the inside. Sometimes I wonder if grieving is like so. We deny. We compartmentalize. We try to conceal and stop the liquid flow. We try to stop the tears from flowing. Dice the green and red pepper, and pineapple. As I chopped, it first fell in half then in quarters then in eighths and sixteenths and more. Red, green, yellow and the glazed pork. It was so colorful and shiny. It felt like home again.
I went to the cemetery on that tundra like cold day. The grave site workers told me no one is out here today but you. I told him, “Mitch, I was here to visit my grandmother.” He then said, “I guess these ritual do mean something.” I said, “Reflecting and grieving is SO not a trend in our culture. No one really likes to carve out time for it in our daily planner.”
