Food Is Love

I attended a celebration of life ceremony yesterday for a coworker who passed away unexpectedly at the end of August. I came out of a weekend trail work party and received the message in a voicemail. Although she was 70, her death came at quite a shock and I am still trying to process the loss. I had been looking forward to her memorial as a way to resolve some of the feelings I was having. I tend to avoid things like this unless I have to go, I don’t really deal with death well. Not that anyone does, I guess.

The event was a wonderful tribute to her life and there were over a hundred friends and family in attendance. It was done in what I guess would be the way she would have wanted, like one big dinner party at her house. A large buffet of food and wine for everyone! There was table to remember her by with momentos and pictures from her life. A life well lived. They even played an interview she did with Edmonds Community College about her education and life that was nice to see. To hear her voice.

But the event didn’t help me like I had hoped it would. I didn’t really see anyone there that I knew that I could talk with to share what the loss meant to me. There were familiar faces, but no one I felt comfortable enough to talk to. I am really an introvert with an extrovert facade; functions like this make me so uncomfortable. It took a lot just to walk in the door by myself.

See, Jeanne and I shared a love for cooking. A love for food. I worked as her sous chef for cooking classes she taught through Everett Parks and Recreation. She ran a cooking school in Edmonds, Sweet Basil’s, but also gave these classes and had done so for over 20 years. She knew Julia Child, traveled to Italy and France to study cooking and had an amazing depth of knowledge around food and its preparation.

Over the last 6 years or so working with her, I learned a lot and we shared plenty of smiles in the kitchen. Although I couldn’t eat a lot of the foods she served, there were quite a few fundamentals I gleaned. I can cook the perfect steak and feel confident with rack of lamb. Most of her recipes were traditional, so it was easy to swap out for paleo alternatives

Jeanne was also very generous. She “accidentally” bought a cookbook at Costco and then realized it was better for me. When she heard me say I didn’t have a suribachi, she happened to have an extra with her at the next class. She was always asking me to take home a kitchen utensil I might need from the ones she sold in class. She even invited me as her guest to one of the cooking classes she had in her home.

But the thing I will miss most was our shared passion for food as a way of connecting with others. The importance of friends and family around the dining room table. Joy over finding a delicious new restaurant. Discovering a traditionally sold ingredient for a recipe. The folks that came to her class were mostly regulars; they came for the recipes but they also came for the connection they felt with her. It was like coming over to dinner and catching up with a friend you hadn’t seen in awhile.

Tears come to my eyes to write this, I don’t know how I will replace her friendship. She wasn’t just a coworker. It wasn’t until her death that I realized how much I really felt connected to that part of my job. How much she had meant to me.

If there is one thing I will take away from her death is that you should NEVER put off your dreams and sometimes it doesn’t pay to take baby steps. As long as I knew her, she talked about writing her own cookbook. This year, she had finally bought a new computer (technology was NOT her thing) so she could start writing it. It will now remain unwritten.

I drove away from the wonderful celebration that her family and friends had put on still feeling unresolved. I had done all the things I thought would help: sent a card to her husband, went to the service, told him how I was going to miss her, sat with others eating well made food, and filled out the “favorite memory” card on the memorabilia table.

But I got home and sat wondering what I was going to do. It felt like there was something I still needed to process.

Then it hit me. I needed to cook. Cook a recipe of hers.