Traditions and Grief

My love language is food. I love to bake, but mostly I love to share what I make. So Christmastime is a special time for me to bake cookies that only come out once a year, ones my family has always enjoyed and looked forward to eating. This year, however, I don’t have the desire to bake. It took until last night to realize the reason.

My dad loved molasses and Pfeffer Neuse cookies. Because we lived so far from each other and my sister was having difficulty finding them, I would order the Pfeffer Neuse cookies online and send them to him. Last year I sent him these cookies from before Christmas until February. Although they are usually just Christmas cookies, I continued buying them as comfort food because my mom died on January 23^rd. I finally stopped when he was concerned that he was gaining too much weight, which he wasn’t.

When I went to Syracuse in June to be with my dad, I made molasses cookies for him. They were soft and easy to eat. He loved them! It felt great to bake for him. I couldn’t change the fact that my mom was dead or he was declining, but I could make something that brought him pleasure. When I returned in July, I made him more cookies, but he could not eat them this time. I arrived on Wednesday, and he stopped eating on Friday. The care worker that was coming to help during the day enjoyed them. I told her to take them. My dad died nine days later.

The association between food and death has affected me since Mike died almost eleven years ago. I only ate Oreos after Mike’s death, mainly because it was the hundredth anniversary before he died, and we had started buying them. Because my son wanted the traditional cookies once Thanksgiving was over, I began to bake again. It was soothing and familiar. After that, I associated Oreos with death and had no desire to eat them anymore. My baking spark returned. Since dad died, I only make chocolate chip cookies because I tutor students who enjoy them. I now think about dad dying when I think about molasses cookies, which also have many Christmas flavors. I haven’t had one since he died.

This is the first Christmas without my parents. Even though I wasn’t baking and sending cookies to them, my memories are entangled with my baking tradition. For now, I’m not planning on making cookies. It’s a lot of work, and my heart is too heavy to put in the effort. One of the things that I’ve learned about grief is that I can change my mind and make cookies if I’m up to it or skip this year and make the cookies next year. When grieving, the only correct answer is to do what works best for you.