I have all of my mother’s tried and true recipe cards. Each one filled with ingredients lists and the remnants, the specks, of flour and sugar and love. Love was never listed as an item, it never made the notecard, but it was always there. I can assure you.
And now that my mother is gone, left this world before ever turning 58, I wish I would have the recipe, the concoction, to heal the wounds of her death and the grief of her absence.
I flip through from chocolate ganache cake to monkey bread and I wish and hope there’d be one labeled loss or mourning, some kind of advice or recommendation for this unchangeable reality.
She left behind the recipes to her secret components and unspoken elements, but she never shared the recipe or necessary items to continue living without her.
What would that index card even read? What would it say? Would it be written in her one-of-a-kind script so I could trust that it was hers? Would it have droplets of tears instead of spatters of sugar because she knew the harshness of what it takes to create this recipe called grief?
Would it say the truth of how long it takes craft– to heal, and comprehend, and continue, which is forever. This recipe will take forever.
Would it have a disclaimer: This recipe isn’t quick and it isn’t easy?
Would there, could there, even be a recipe for this? Surely, if there were, she would have perfected it before leaving it behind. And maybe that’s why it’s missing. She never figured out the mix, the solution. She never found the most accurate list and timeline, for it seemed to change with each death, which each loss.
It was the one recipe she couldn’t leave. One guide that simply does not exist.
This thing, this ache, is mine to handcraft. It’s mine to work through and knead as best fits me. It must be tailored to my taste, to my unique design.
And at the end of the stack, I find an empty notecard and I write:
And now it all seems doable. It seems possible, though the difficulty level is high.
She gave me the recipe all along. Her life was the ingredients list, and her love will be the key ingredient in my healing, in my survival.
I guess grief does have a recipe. It’s called a legacy.
