How memories of food made my grief a little easier
By Justin Howard
I was born via C-Section, resulting in my mom and I have matching scars on her stomach and my left cheek. I look like a bruiser in my baby pictures.
Like clockwork, I’d hear the same story every year on my birthday: I was horribly colicky the first few nights at home. My mom was exhausted, sitting on the couch, sobbing, trying to get the screaming, five-day-old me to sleep. My grandmother walked into the scene, wrapped in curlers and a nightgown, and her mother’s intuition kicked in. She scooped me up out of Mom’s hands, and with her angelic alto, hummed sweet nothings while bouncing me gently in her arms. And with that, I fell asleep.
I was at the end of my graduate school semester, in April 2022, when I received a call from my mom telling me that Grandma had fallen again. This was nothing new. She had long been having fainting spells due to her poor heart function. She had a pacemaker put in her heart several years earlier to activate her left chamber. She was a stubborn-as-a-mule, 91-year-old woman, and I expected nothing to be amiss. I assumed the incident would result in a quick check-up with her cardiologist, where she’d be given some aspirin and a quick lecture before being sent on her way. But this time was different. The impact from the fall bruised her so severely that it evolved into an infection. After a few days, I received another text from Mom. Grandma was in the hospital.
A lead weight dropped into my stomach. “Do I need to be on a plane right now?” I frantically asked Mom.
“No, no. I don’t think it’s that,” she assured me.
A few days later, things improved. Grandma was in an after-care facility and doing well, just as I expected. A fall wasn’t going to take her down that easily. Yet, out of nowhere, pneumonia set in, and her heart struggled to keep up. She was rushed back to the hospital in the middle of the night, and Mom ran the phone tree again. This time her tone was distant and lost. For the first time in my life, I could tell she was scared.
My earliest memory of my grandmother is sitting in the classroom where she taught kindergarten for 30 years. "You can take the teacher out of kindergarten, but you cannot take it out of the teacher!" was her motto, and her heart for little kids remained strong. She regularly gushed over young children at our church, First Presbyterian. When she retired after I was born, her baby’s baby became her newest obsession; to say we became instant partners in crime is an understatement. I was a regular feature in her sisterhood of recently retired women who were mutually giving their lives a second act in service to the church.
Later, when I was finally old enough to attend Sunday School, her brown refrigerator became dotted with scribble-colored images of Jesus and biblical stories. Inside held a few cans of Barq’s root beer on the bottom shelf, low enough that I could serve myself the sweet-spicy, fizzy elixir from their silver cans. I received this treat with simple reminders to consider my manners: please and thank you. I honestly don’t know if Barq’s branding has changed once during my life, but I do know that Grandma refused to drink Mug.
“My mother used to make her own root beer,” Grandma told me. I didn’t believe it. How could someone make soda? “She took the recipe to her grave,” she said, reflecting on how she’d been caught off guard by her mother’s sudden passing. This reflection resulted in her teaching me my first lessons in the homemaker trade, and I received regular classes at the stove, standing on a step stool so I could see her work her magic.
For several grueling days after my mother called about Grandma’s condition, I awoke to text after text, each detailing the painful crawl toward the inevitable. I found myself trapped between the obligation of finals week, and the impending death of my grandmother 2,000 miles away.
“I know she would want you to stay and finish, and I feel like you do, too,” my father told me. Sometimes I hate that he has a psychology degree, but in that moment, he was right. She’d always been steadfast on the values of education and simultaneously held the old protestant stalwartness of summoning strength in times of struggle and pain. Stiff upper lip. It felt selfish to stay put in New York, but I knew being by her side wouldn’t change the outcome.
I have my grandmother to thank for my father coming into my life. Grandma had introduced my mom to the young, former fighter pilot who she’d met in the church choir. Their rapid courtship turned into marriage, and two years later, on St. Valentine's Day, he adopted me. Unfortunately, my parents divorced a few years later during my 5th grade year, and that began the back-and-forth across town, state, and country that is the mixed blessing of split custody. When I turned 18, my adoptive father could have easily cut his losses, but he didn’t. He remained the voice of love, understanding, and reason in my life—all the things I needed as my grandmother’s health rapidly declined and my world fell apart.
Grandma passed away on the evening of May 6th. Her last meal was a simple dish of chocolate ice cream, lovingly fed to her by my mom before falling asleep for the last time.
Once, while thawing a white, doughy log to make her famous Schnecken, Grandma said, "Frozen bread dough saved a generation of women!” The German pastry was her holiday pot-luck workhorse of cinnamon, brown sugar, and pecans, and she’d made it every year since time began. However, she was often a little distracted while baking, becoming too absorbed in the paper or a book to notice the loud PING of her olive-green egg timer. Thus, I developed a taste for her slightly overdone baked goods, until I was old enough to open the oven on my own and intervene.
Like most young women in the 50s, teaching, nursing, or administrative work made up the brief list of professions available to Grandma when she came of age. She chose to become a teacher and received her degree in Nebraska at Wayne State. After graduation, she literally flipped a quarter with a college friend to decide whether to go to Chicago or Las Vegas. Tails sent her to “Sin City,” where she met my grandfather at the urging of her future mother-in-law (who was not so thrilled with the woman my grandfather was seeing at the time). To say my great-grandmother Mary was a determined woman is an understatement. She also died at 91, a month before I turned 17, having been jokingly kept alive by spite. Looking back on her in old photographs, there is no doubt she loved her family … albeit in her own waspy way.
Once married and having commenced her homemaker life, Grandma was a consummate host and North Star in the social societies of mid-century Las Vegas. She was a member of many women's and charity groups like The Mesquite Club, Daughters of the Nile, and the Philanthropic Educational Organization (I only remember it being called PEO). When it was her turn to host the meetings, out came Jell-O mixtures, sweet-and-sour franks, and her favorite party drink: Sea Foam Punch. Housewives of the time cut their teeth in the golden age of processed foods that would “save them time!”
I was finally in Nevada. What remained of our immediate family arrived in piecemeal in the days before the memorial. We solemnly foraged through Grandma’s home to find pictures for her service. Mom managed her grief by staying busy as the executor, which kept her distracted enough to finish this monumental task. I contemplated how I would manage the role when her day came.
We went through old albums, drawers, and picture frames that were scattered all over her house. Out of the woodwork appeared a woman we never knew existed: a clarinet player in the marching band, the vice president of her high school class, a sorority sister in college, someone who played parlor tricks and loved to wear deep red lipstick. In fact, every photo she had of herself had dark lips that color film never got the privilege to show. It’s true what they say: everything comes out in the end.
My grandmother’s childhood was a story told with brief punctuation and seemed unpleasant for her to discuss casually. Born in the worst of the Depression in 1931, she was the second child to the Oblander family—a middle-aged couple who had settled in the suburbs of Chicago. Her father worked as a night watchman for a local undertaker. In a time of extreme financial strain and stretching food, being a girl meant that she was a second pair of hands for her mother in the kitchen. Many autumns were spent rapidly preserving fruit before the harsh midwestern winters set in. For over a decade, everything the family ate was made by hand.
When Grandma would say, “frozen dough saved a generation of women,” she spoke from experience. When your childhood consists of kneading bread and only knowing want, the freedom of time is unbelievably valuable. The Depression crystallized food anxiety into long-term coping mechanisms that would last a lifetime. She was always in survival mode, fearing that something would happen. The threats of the Cold War made it worse. Las Vegas is about 100 miles south of the nuclear range at Nellis Air Force Base, and her morning commutes featured mushroom clouds rising over Sheeps’ Mountain. She hoarded canned food to prepare for the inevitable, be it a nuclear holocaust or the market’s collapse. What was thought to be strange behavior to some, made perfect sense to her. As far as she knew it, there were no guarantees in life, a hard lesson to let go of.
This overarching fear meant that anything that worked would never be thrown away. Be they obsolete or a fire hazard, appliances with cloth wires were tucked away in her home like little time bombs. She used safety pins to hold clothing together that was “still good,” despite the elastic being shot or the seams worn to the threads. This saving was a constant struggle between her and my mom who was always pleading with her to buy new things. They eventually compromised on new kitchen counters.
The funeral was held on May 27th, the Friday before Memorial Day. Words of remembrance and support filled the church’s social hall after the funeral.
“You were her best friend. She just loved you.”
“You were her little buddy.”
“She was unbelievably proud of you, and she adored and loved you so much.”
It was strange to be in a place I hadn’t stepped foot in for nearly 20 years: stained-glass windows, the laminated floors and cinder-block walls. It even smelled the same—stale, burnt coffee tinged with dried soda syrup from the recycling bin. The room seemed smaller.
The day after the service, the family gathered at Grandma’s house once again to put documents in order and begin the task of cataloging what our matriarch left behind. We sat at her dining room table, encircled by years' worth of family portraits, all taken at a studio near Lindo Michoacan—one of the best Mexican restaurants in southern Nevada, and Grandma’s favorite. But that day, our lunch was a take-away pot-luck of chicken salad, Thai curry, and street tacos—a sure sign that without her there calling the shots, we were beginning to drift apart.
The family trickled out of the city, but I volunteered to stay back a few days to help pack up Grandma’s house. Mom said I could set aside anything that meant something to me, and everything else would be sent off to brokers, an estate sale, and charities. I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.
Of course, I scooped up the green egg timer. It still had its signature PING. I found her old home economics textbook, inscribed with her name in blue ink, written by hands that had yet to master cursive. In storage closets were all her mid-century appliances: electric warming trays, crock pots, and a giant portable grill. They all worked. Waste not … .
I moved to the living room where her vintage, ring-bound and paperback cookbooks lived—the ones that churches or schools put together to raise money. At last, I’d found my prize. All of her organizations were represented there: PEO, Mesquite Club, Rainbow Girls, Daughters of the Nile, and even one for the Outriggers Club, a boating group started by the church. Each book was a cache of prized recipes from her friends who came from all over, a hard record of the real culinary history of Las Vegas that many decorated food columnists have never figured out. Grandma always shared a recipe for the books, and it was often her favorite party drink of Sea Foam Punch.
Everyone thinks the Las Vegas food story played out in restaurants on the Las Vegas Strip or Fremont Street, but it really unfolded in our neighborhood pot-lucks, barbecues, and cocktail parties, all held in sunken living rooms and converted garages.
As I cleaned, I would take breaks at the kitchen table to rest my back and feet between hours of scouring and organizing. I sat in the same spot I did as a child, where Grandma served a breakfast of soggy cheerios and bananas. I could almost hear the low hum of AM talk radio and the creak of her sitting on her stool, dressed in a blue robe and curlers, sipping coffee as she thumbed the paper looking for comic strips for me to read.
“Sorry, honey, no funnies today.”
There in the kitchen, we’d eat her favorite treat of fresh apricots with vanilla-bean ice cream. A neighbor in her retirement community had an apricot tree in their yard, and in late summer, we’d walk down to pick what was left, usually the ones higher up that the birds hadn’t gotten to. Gently, Grandma would lift me up onto the pony wall and hold me steady by my waist. On the wall, I was just tall enough to pick the supple, blush-colored fruit. Back in the kitchen, she would quickly rinse and pit them with a paring knife, and while still warm from the sun, the juicy flesh would gently melt the spotted sweet cream.
The greatest act of love is when someone prepares food for you.
After ten days of labor, I’d had my fill of being surrounded by good and bad memories. I headed back to New York with mementos of my grandmother packed away in my suitcase. I was overwhelmed, processing loss and shock, all while marathoning through finals week with this void in the back of my mind. I foolishly pushed everything down and showed a brave face before, during, and after my studies. Stiff upper lip. Frankly, NYC, drenched in fog as the plane touched down, felt appropriate. Two days later, my partner and I traveled to Syracuse to celebrate my brother’s high school graduation. From there, I went to a cabin on Lake Placid to process the only way repression allows: vice. I needed help, and when we returned to the city, I began intensive therapy to save me from myself.
Grief is the price we pay for love, and I soon found my salve in sharing food. I love how sharing food connects me to the many special memories where Grandma fed me—small gestures that let me know she cared. It was from her pantry of canned goods where I tasted my first sour pickle. After-school car trips often began with a fun-sized candy bar from her purse and where I first tasted the complexity of Hershey's special dark. There was Sizzler for after doctors' visits, Marie Calendar’s pies for Easter and Christmas. There were Frosties from Wendy’s and curly fries from Arby’s. My all-time favorite will remain the Sunday brunches at the Omelet House. Food was the thread that held our lives together, and I work to honor that legacy by cooking for the people I love and care about. In my house, everyone eats.
I am the last child on my mom’s side of the family, and that fact was a source of my grandmother's mixed feelings when I came out as queer. But she kept a photograph of me laughing with my partner, Josh, sitting on the kitchen counter for her to see every day. That's a real family. They might not understand you, but they do their best to respect and love you in their own way.
New stories continue to unfold. When I told my mom I was working on this piece which mentions how Grandma and I ate apricots with ice cream. Mom laughed and said, “Funny you should mention it. Until I was in third grade, we lived in a house with an apricot tree in the front yard.” I was stunned! She continued, “She always canned them, dozens and dozens of jars filled with apricot preserves. I honestly can’t stand apricots because we ate so much of it back then.”
I suggested she try them with ice cream sometime. It might change her mind.
Grandma’s Sea Foam Punch
Makes 15 servings (1 cup per serving)
Ingredients
1 envelope of lemon-lime Kool-Aid (powder will be green)
1/2 cup of powdered sugar (melts better than granular sugar)
1 quart of cold 2% or skim milk
1 pint of vanilla ice cream
1 and 3/4 cups of lemon-lime seltzer (or 2 small 7-oz bottles of grapefruit Topo Chico)
Instructions
Pour milk into a punch bowl and whisk in sugar and kool-aid until well combined. Mixture will have a milky, aqua-green color.
With a smaller scooper, spoon in the vanilla ice cream.
Slowly add the seltzer to form the springy foam on top of the punch.
Serve immediately.
I recommend pairing it with spiced rum or sweet liquor if you want to add a little boozy kick that won't curdle the milk.
Recipe, courtesy of Phyllis V.O. Noblitt
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Justin Howard is a first-year grad student from Las Vegas, Nevada. With a background in activism, anthropology, and law, his research centers on food rituals framed by human behavior, gender and sexuality, and more recently: the supply chain. You will usually find him on a park bench watching people.