Communing with spirits and coping with death

— Grief food in three cultures

In Mexico, sugar skulls are made to represent the soul of a departed loved one

Rituals around preparing and eating ‘grief food’ bring comfort to mourners – from Russia to Sri Lanka – and connect them to the dead.

By Annie Hariharan

In Mexico, pan de muerto (bread of the dead) is a special sweet bread made annually for the Day of the Dead in early November.

Shaped like a roll and topped with a cross and a nub – meant to symbolise bones and teardrops or hearts – the pan de muerto is both an offering to the deceased and a treat for everyone, explains Kati Hogarth. She grew up in Mexico but now calls Australia home and works in the creative industry. “It’s a bit sweet”, she adds, “to lure the spirits to come and share it with us.”

Pan de Muerte — Pan de Muerto is sweetened ‘to lure the spirits to come and share it with us’ says Kati Hogarth who grew up in Mexico

Food is closely connected to our rituals around death. Whether we are inviting spirits to commune with us or preparing feasts for the grieving, food provides solace, comfort and nourishment – often of the soul – at a time of mourning.

For example, in countries like the US and Australia, friends and neighbours will drop off casseroles or lasagnas, understanding that the bereaved often don’t have time or energy to make food.

Of course, many countries do not turn to a meat-and-cheese carbfest to mark a loved one’s passing. But those acts of cooking and eating – those heartfelt rituals around food – hold significant meaning when it comes to burials, mourning and even the remembrance of ancestors.

Altar — A Mexican altar to departed family members includes sugar skulls made to represent the souls of departed loved ones

Take koliva (also spelled kolyva, koljivo or coliva), a wheat-based dish that makes an appearance at Orthodox Christian funerals – from Greece to Russia – and is served in similar yet slightly different ways.

In Russia, the spelling is different – kutia – but Anastasia Kaissidis, a Russian mother of two who now calls Australia home, explains that it is essentially the same dish.

“It is like porridge but more sticky than watery. We make it with boiled wheat, barley and sometimes rice. Then, we add honey for the sweet taste and dried fruits like sultanas or berries and walnuts,” Kaissidis says. “It is really easy and quick to make. There’s no meat in it and most people would have ingredients like wheat at home.” A meatless dish makes it more affordable as well.

In other places like Greece or Macedonia, sugar is sometimes added as a sweetener, as well as other dried fruits and nuts like pomegranate seeds or walnuts. The dried fruits and nuts not only provide textural and colour contrast but they can be used to decorate the top of the dish in the shape of a cross or initials of the deceased.

Kutia is steeped in the rituals of a Russian Christian Orthodox funeral. The family of the deceased – “usually the women”, Kaissidis says – are responsible for making it for the people who drop by to pay their respects. “After the burial, people will come to the family’s house, so they will prepare food. Traditionally, kutia is the first dish we eat before anything else,” Kaissidis explains. “It will be scooped into small bowls so that everyone can have some. You just need a little taste and after that, you can eat the rest of the food on the table.”

The dish also has a symbolic meaning. “In Christianity, we believe life is eternal and we celebrate resurrection,” Kaissidis explains. “The wheat symbolises new life because it must be buried before it can grow again, else it will just rot. The honey or sugar symbolises that life will be sweet in heaven.”

Georgi Velkovski, a Macedonian living in Belgium knows this communal dish as koliva. He describes it as a sticky, sweet paste that is a bit bland and not to his taste, “like eating a piece of bread if you squeeze it and chew on it”.

“The family of the deceased would serve it on a plate along with tasting spoons. They would go around and offer koliva to visitors. People would take a spoonful of the dish and place the dirty spoons in a separate cup or container. This way, everyone is sharing the koliva,” he explains.

Anastasia Kaissidis, a Russian mother of two, talks about grief food in Russian Orthodox communities

When people don’t have the space to accommodate mourners in their own

houses, they may go to a cafe or restaurant. “When my grandmother died, there were about 20 close family members attending the funeral and they came from everywhere. Instead of having the meal at home, we pre-ordered food from a cafe, including kutia, because it was easier,” Kaissidis shares.

Although koliva is simple, cheap and filling, neither Kaissidis nor Velkovski will make or eat it outside of funerals – although other people in the Russian or Macedonian community may serve it during religious celebrations or even Christmas.

For Kaissidis, this is a sacred dish that is associated with funerals and not something to make for a casual Saturday brunch. “Sometimes, I make my kids porridge with honey because it is kid-friendly. I suppose it is similar to kutia, just a bit waterier but I wouldn’t call it kutia,” she says with a laugh.

Communal cooking in Sri Lanka

While the Orthodox Christian community communes with one sacred dish after a funeral, in Sri Lankan Buddhist culture, everyone comes together to cook full meals in support of the bereaved family.

When there is a death in the community, particularly in villages with close-knit communities, someone will take charge and start by collecting funds. “People give based on their finances and this collection will be used for the rites,” explains Zinara Rathnayake, a journalist and social media manager from Sri Lanka. On the last day of the ceremony, Sri Lankan Buddhist families typically cremate the bodies of the deceased although some may also choose a burial. This is then followed by a feast or ceremony called Mala Batha which is a meal provided to people who came over to pay their respects to the deceased.

Zinara Rathnayake says a Sri Lankan funeral feast is ‘a feast for the living’ but also, some believe, a ‘feast for the spirit who might still be lingering’

“If there’s enough space in the family’s house, they will cook the meal inside. If not, they will pick a house with a large garden to cook outside with a makeshift fire stove,” Rathnayake explains.

While this is a feast for the living, some people believe it is also a feast for the spirit who might still be lingering; this is a way to feed them before they head off to the other world.

The meal features food that people cook and eat daily – like dahl, dried fish curry, potato dishes, brinjal (aubergine) dishes, leafy green salads and papadums – rather than symbolic, funeral-specific dishes. These dishes are meatless. Meat is often considered “impure” so a vegetarian diet is de facto for periods of mourning.

This will vary from villages and communities, but people instinctively know the role they need to play; they may have done something similar for weddings or festivals. “The men might go off to buy the provisions and others will bring a large pot with utensils. Someone will cook rice, others will chop the vegetables. There is a mutual understanding,” says Ratnayake.

Sri Lanka vegetable curry — Vegetable curry is often served following a funeral in Sri Lanka

Following the Mala Batha, neighbours will continue to support the bereaved family by cooking for them. “The food part is taken care of by the community because the family is not in a state where they can cook,” says Ratnayake. “People will make potato curry or grated coconut sambol, buy large boxes of biscuits, make tea or coffee.” As Ratnayake explains, this is partly because traditionally, there is no concept of freezing and reheating food here; food is eaten on the same day it is cooked.

Offerings to the deceased in Malaysian-Chinese culture

Sometimes, the food that is prepared during funerals is not for the living. Instead, each element of the meal represents the deceased’s journey into the afterlife.

Chin (who asked not to use her real name to protect her family’s feelings) has a Chinese-Buddhist-Taoist background and lives in a country town in Australia. When her mother passed away in Malaysia, she became aware of the numerous rituals she had to fulfil and the symbolic food she had to place by her mother’s altar.

“We had her wake at a funeral centre,” Chin explains, “It was a three-day wake followed by a burial. There was someone at the centre to guide us on rituals and procedures, including what to wear. Most modern Chinese people don’t know what to do for these rituals!”

Malaysia-China funeral feast — Dishes at a funeral in Malaysian-Chinese communities include cooked meats, particularly a boiled chicken placed at the centre of the table and representing the spirit’s flight to the beyond

The standard dishes for Chinese funerals in Malaysia include cooked meats: a roasted pig symbolises eternity and good luck, a boiled chicken represents the spirit’s flight to the beyond and a roast duck symbolises protection for the spirit as it crosses the three rivers (Gold River, Silver River and the Life-Death River) that are synonymous in Chinese-Buddhist belief with giving and supporting life. Everything is served with rice, which represents family and respect.

Among the dishes that Chin prepared for her mother’s funeral was a stir-fry vegetarian dish called Buddha’s Delight, plus her mother’s favourite tea and fruit.

“There had to be five different colours of fruits, so we had green grapes, yellow pears, red apples, white peaches and black Chinese chestnuts,” Chin explains. The idea is to invite the deceased to eat along with the living.

One of the foods that is closely associated with Malaysian-Chinese funerals is pink and yellow steamed buns. These buns also make an appearance during the Hungry Ghost Festival; a month-long period when the Chinese community makes offerings to appease and honour spirits that roam the earth. Like koliva, these soft buns are also made with pantry staples – flour, yeast, sugar, baking powder, and shortening – and steamed, since most Southeast Asian kitchens do not have ovens.

Family members are also encouraged to offer food that the deceased used to enjoy. “On day seven, we laid out the dining table with my mother’s favourite food because symbolically, this is the last meal we are giving to her spirit,” Chin says. The idea is that after this feast, the spirit has to leave our world.

During this time, Chin and her family were expected to stay in their rooms from 10pm to 2am.

Afterwards, “we threw away the whole banquet because it is [considered] bad luck to eat it”, Chin says. “This is the part I did not like because it’s so wasteful.”

The “bad luck” is a mix of superstition – not wanting to eat something that a spirit has feasted on; and concern about food hygiene – not eating something that has been sitting at room temperature in the tropics.

Chin understands the purpose of rituals, but also finds some of them “ridiculous”.

“I rolled my eyes a lot but we had to ‘do the right thing for the deceased’. When my father passed away, my mother did the same thing for him and it was clear that this is what she wanted too.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

January 23, 2024January 22, 2024

“That’s for remembrance”

– A recipe for garlic and rosemary lamb

By Siobhan Ball

I wrote half of last month’s column in an airport, trying to get to my grandmother before it was too late. Neither of us made it; she was gone before I even boarded. When I was done ugly crying – on the phone to my cousin as he broke the news, then again in front of the alarmed workers of the airport Costa – I wanted to metaphorically tear up everything I’d written and start on this instead, even if I didn’t have a clear idea of what this was yet, beyond something about rosemary’s tie to memory and a roast lamb no one would ever make for me again.

But it was the Winter Solstice coming up, and my first entry in a column on the place where food and magic intersect; and, crucially, it was too close to that moment of raw grief to pull it together into something coherent, something worthwhile. So I finished that piece on tea and mead and spices and the interwoven debts that we owe each other, and I’m bringing this to you now instead.

Rosemary is the herb of memory. I miss my grandmother.

When dealing with traditional herbal correspondences it can be hard to separate the magical from the mundane. Partly because our ancestors didn’t make that distinction themselves, seeing magic, faith, and physical medicine as part of a single whole in a world entirely imbued with the sacred. But also because, as traditional herbcraft has faded out of practice, attributions which were once meant to be understood literally can seem like metaphor or mysticism, only to then surprise us when we rediscover their physical nature. Rosemary, and the impact it has on memory, is one such example.

When Ophelia includes the herb in her list of accusatory flowers, it’s easy to assume her famous quote, “rosemary, that’s for remembrance” is as metaphorical as the rest. But rosemary has long been a herb associated with funerary rites, with death, and with remembrance of the departed, traditionally being placed on the biers of the dead. Its strong smell, which lingers in the room like a memory, would have helped to cover the beginnings of decay, as well as indelibly tying itself to that moment of grief and loss in the mourner’s neurology. Scent is one of the key triggers of memory, even with substances that don’t specifically effect cognition – how much more powerful rosemary’s impact then, with the discovery that it does.

Rosemary has other folkloric ties to memory outside of the funeral parlour – with Ancient Greek students supposedly using it as a study aid, and Sir Thomas Moore declaring the herb sacred to friendship because it provokes remembrance of the living, not just the dead.

As modern medical research examines herblore to see if there are effective treatments that have been overlooked, or that can be made effective with modern scientific techniques, rosemary has had its turn in the laboratory. Studies indicate that ingesting rosemary enhances recall speed as well as improves episodic and working memory, and may even have a positive impact on Alzheimers, though more research needs to be done to understand why.

Even inhaling the scent of rosemary seems beneficial, though the impact is smaller, and works best if the subject is exposed to the scent both during the learning process and then again when asked to recall things later on – scent as a memory trigger, enhanced by the effects of rosemary’s unique chemical composition on the brain.

A bouquet of herbs, including rosemary, in a bowl

This puts us in a position where rosemary is uniquely suited to remember and honour the beloved dead. Symbolically linked to the dead through religious rites and burial practices, tied to love and the transition from one life stage to another (it is worn at weddings as well as funerals), rosemary also helps us to remember in a literal, physical way. Eaten regularly, it may help preserve the memories of those departed, as well as prompting us to remember meals shared or time spent cooking together when the familiar scents reach us and work their neurological magic.

To combine the spiritual with the physical is a very powerful thing, grounding us in both realms at once, and binding them together in us. That which is gone is never really gone.

Garlic and Rosemary Lamb

Growing up, my grandmother was the only person who could cook a roast lamb I actually enjoyed eating. I don’t know how she did it, and she was a cooking by instinct sort of person so there are no recipes left behind. I still don’t eat lamb that much, though it’s appeared more often in my house since I married a New Zealander, but I knew it was exactly what I wanted to make for this column, and my grandmother. I hope you like it.

Lamb shoulder (900g)

Fresh rosemary (2 – 3 tablespoons, chopped)
3 bulbs of garlic
500g baby potatoes
125 ml red wine
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Flour

Start by setting the oven to pre-heat at 240 C (220 C fan, ~450 F). While that’s heating up, mix four tablespoons of olive oil with eight cloves of crushed garlic, the rosemary, and the salt and pepper. When thoroughly mixed rub it all over the lamb shoulder. Halve the remaining garlic bulbs and place them with the potatoes in a roasting tray, drizzle with olive oil, crack salt and pepper over them, and then place the lamb on top. Finally, pour the wine over it all and cover with a tinfoil tent before placing it into the oven.

Let the lamb roast for fifty minutes and then remove the tinfoil for the final ten minutes to let it crisp up nicely. Once it’s done let the lamb rest for fifteen minutes. While the meat is resting, remove the garlic and potatoes from the tray so you can turn the drippings into a gravy by whisking in flour over a low heat until it reaches your preferred consistency.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

January 9, 2024January 8, 2024

‘A good send-off’

— Why food plays a major role in Irish wakes and funerals

Irish funerals and wakes since ancient times have always highlighted the importance of food, feasting and hospitality

By Marion McGarry

As one of those who lost an elderly parent during the pandemic, we were unable to give the appropriate ‘send-off’ to a member of the older generation who would have fully expected one. I found myself at one stage mechanically making two sliced pans worth of sandwiches in my late mother’s kitchen, forgetting there would be no mourners coming to serve them to due to lockdown restrictions.

This brought into sharp focus the real function of funeral hospitality: without visitors to share the food with, my immediate family lacked the impetus – or the appetite – and the food was thrown out days later. It’s the rituals that help make a funeral. Often we don’t know why, but we enact them in the knowledge that it’s what we’re supposed to do. Without the anchor of a set of traditions to follow, the days around a funeral, difficult enough to navigate with grief, felt even more rudderless at the height of Covid.

Providing appropriate provisions for guests was a deep seated concept in Ireland. Under the Brehon laws, a householder was required to offer food and lodging to any traveller passing through. The higher a guest’s social status, the higher level of hospitality they expected to receive.

Later, great funeral feasts were held for Gaelic chieftains where the new heir marked his succession by providing ceremonial meals for mourners. These funeral banquets were as much about the heir’s generosity for appearances’ sake. Lavish hospitality could help advance a family in Gaelic society by demonstrating prestige and power.

Stakes were high, and guests with elevated expectations could be quite judgemental about what was on offer. Guests attending funerals expected good food and drink to be served. Traditionally, mourners were provided with food and drink to provide sustenance while they sat up with the corpse through all-night wakes. Partaking of hospitality was one of many rituals that, once enacted during this liminal period, was another stage in signifying the soul of the deceased passing over into the next realm.

Perhaps therein lies the roots of Irish generosity in such circumstances: legislated in old Irish law and as a concept in tradition, it became innate in folk custom that it was right and proper to offer appropriate hospitality. It was also considered ‘unlucky to refuse’, and the superstitious time around a funeral was not one where people took their chances with luck.

By the early 20th century, bestowing hospitality despite humble circumstances was a key tenet of Irish identity. James Joyce wrote, albeit ironically, that “the tradition of genuine warm-hearted courteous Irish hospitality, which our forefathers have handed down to us and which we in turn must hand down to our descendants, is still alive among us.” The idea that generous hospitality must be extended continues to be key in most Irish celebrations and feasting today. Being conscious of appearances and not wanting to let the side down or being seen as ‘stingy’ can lead to the often-extravagant spread at Irish gatherings.

The multi-use table

From the post Famine period and into living memory, the ‘feasts’ that maintained formal dining seated at tables were wedding breakfasts and harvest feasts. Funeral catering involved simple food usually served ‘in the hand’ or passed around to mourners informally seated while conversing. These would have been much humbler than the medieval banquets of old.

Late 19th century traditional Irish kitchen table, still in use in the O’Brien homestead in Kilbrittain Co Cork.

At Irish wakes throughout the 19th century, sitting at the kitchen table for hospitality was off-limits, because that piece of furniture was a focal point for reasons other than food. The kitchen table or ‘bord’ might alternatively contain an altar or the corpse itself. When laid out and ready to view on the table the corpse was termed ‘over board’. According to the funeral director David McGowan, this term persisted into living memory.

In earlier times at wakes, the long wooden stretchers underneath the tabletop might be where the corpse was laid out, while the tabletop was used as an altar. Most families would have lacked appropriate furniture to serve the large number of mourners in a formal manner, and neighbours often loaned furniture and crockery.

‘Wake provisions’

As one of the key events in Irish life, guests not only fully expected ‘a good spread’ at a funeral but it had also been also keenly anticipated by the deceased that they would have, and be given, a ‘good send off’. In the more recent past, even the poorest people saved money so that their funeral could be catered suitably.

At a time of frugal diets, dominated by potatoes and buttermilk, a funeral offered a chance to feast on treats: tea with sugar, bread with jam, a glass of whiskey, good tobacco. These were key on the shopping list known as the ‘wake provisions’.

A wake provisions list from 1912 in the Clay Pipe Museum, Knockcroghery, Co Roscommon.

The custom was that male relatives of the deceased were responsible for going to the local grocer to collect this. The men had to do this in pairs, to have another to-hand for protection from any evil spirits at a potentially dangerous spiritual time. The wake provisions included clay pipes and tobacco, alcohol such as porter and whiskey, along with tea, shop-bought white bread, jam, sugar and meat.

In the past, wakes and funerals, along with fairs and pilgrimages, were large gatherings that allowed a usually dispersed rural community to come together. Many wakes were places for young people to stay up late and socialise, and some wake games facilitated flirtation and courtship. In addition, the serving of treats and alcohol gave a party atmosphere that along with some of the ‘heathen’ customs involved drew the ire of the Catholic Church.

Funeral hospitality today

Although many customs have died out, the funeral in Ireland retains an importance as a collective event, and one where hospitality remains important. Today, this is more formal, invite-only and restrained when compared to the past, when mourners would simply turn up at the house when they heard keening begin. Wakes are now often denoted as ‘house private’ or take place, carefully regulated, in funeral homes.

Any home catering is usually informally served tea and triangle-cut sandwiches, (egg mayonnaise, or ham, or cheese for vegetarians) along with cakes and scones. Church services are followed by cremation or burial, and the ‘afters’ now usually take place at a hotel, where that intrinsic Irish hospitality is remnant in the form of a sit-down meal for invited guests.

Post Celtic Tiger, Irish hotels have become the real engines behind the hospitality for life events that once took place in the home: funerals, weddings, and other celebrations. Hotels and their staff can offer a fascinating lens through which to observe contemporary Irish customs and rituals.

One Irish chef I spoke to observed that ‘hotel’ funerals are not as big as other such events, guests do not linger long and there is a reluctance to take alcohol as many are driving. “From what I’ve witnessed, formal sit-down [funeral] meals are a much quieter affair where people don’t really know how to ‘be’“.

The formalities therefore tend to stifle the atmosphere. The wish to offer substantial hospitality to guests, versus what the guests might actually prefer, and the struggle to figure out what is appropriate these days – food truck? Barbeque? – is a particularly modern Irish conundrum, and one that might be solved by a return to slightly more traditional rituals.

Sean Moncrieff recently wrote of the comfort of funeral food from a mourner’s point of view, and how it is an evocative part of the grieving process. From the point of view of the bereaved, serving and interacting with guests (be it at a wake house or hotel) offers a welcome fleeting distraction from grief. It gently encourages eating and engagement at a time when the stomach feels hollow. To this day, wherever the location, offering and partaking of hospitality, and ritually sharing and consuming, all continues to be an essential part of the Irish funeral tradition, and will continue to be in whatever form it takes in the future.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

January 7, 2024January 6, 2024

End-Of-Life Nutritional Support

— Improving the remaining quality of life is at the heart of proper nutrition in order to support energy and stamina levels

The goal of nutritional support for individuals in palliative care is to improve the remaining quality of life.

By Barbra Williams Cosentino

She’s almost 70 and has struggled to control high cholesterol levels and pre-diabetes for much of her adult life, resisting tempting treats like strawberry shortcake and French fries. But now her appetite is gone, and stage four ovarian cancer is gnawing away at her insides.

She only wants ice cream, preferably chocolate with a cascade of caramel sauce. Her daughter is adamant she shouldn’t have it. “Mom, you know it’s bad for you,” she says. But her mother is dying, and the doctor says it’s essential for her to eat.

Chemotherapy and radiation treatments, particularly to the mouth and other areas involved in the digestive process, can cause tissue injury and irritation and affect eating ability.

The goal of nutritional support for individuals in palliative care (when potentially curative treatments have been deemed unsuccessful and have been stopped) is to improve the remaining quality of life. Proper nutrition impacts energy and stamina levels.

According to Courtney Pelitera RD, a registered dietician with Top Nutrition Coaching, cachexia, wasting of the body and loss of muscle and fat are frequently seen towards the end of life. This can lead to impaired mobility, unplanned hospitalizations and increased symptoms.

Chemotherapy and radiation treatments, particularly to the mouth and other areas involved in the digestive process, can cause tissue injury and irritation and affect eating ability. Because the gut is not functioning normally and people may be less physically active, several symptoms are often seen in people undergoing cancer treatment, living with cancer or at the end of life, says Pelitera.

These changes impact appetite and ability to tolerate certain types of foods or liquids and may include:

Appetite loss, anorexia
Taste and smell changes
Diarrhea, constipation, nausea, indigestion and heartburn
Inflammation of oral mucosa and mouth sores, dry mouth
Difficulty chewing or swallowing (dysphagia), choking episodes

The Emotional Aspects of Food Refusal and Appetite Loss

According to Pelitera, “Sharing a meal is one of the most common ways to socialize. In most cultures, people use food to celebrate milestones and special occasions. It is also sometimes used for comfort and to cheer people up. When someone is ill, visitors will often bring casseroles or sweets.”

“Because hunger cues are gone, people at the end of life are not uncomfortable if they are not eating or drinking.”

However, it can be very upsetting when someone you care about is uninterested in eating or refusing previously enjoyed foods. It is painful to see someone lose weight and become weaker, even though it is the disease process and not only the decreased food intake that is causing it.

The inclination to push food and prepare elaborate meals to try and entice the person to eat is counter-productive. The ill person may feel guilty, as if they are letting you down, and might try to eat even though it can cause them physical discomfort. As Pelitera explains, “Because hunger cues are gone, people at the end of life are not uncomfortable if they are not eating or drinking.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

October 30, 2023October 29, 2023

A dinner party for dead guests serves up surprising connections

— My friends came to a silent supper with their dead friends and relatives so that we could grieve our loved ones together

‘It’s only minutes into the evening when it becomes painfully, joyfully clear that everyone around the table needs this communion’: India Rakusen at her silent supper.

By India Rakusen

I don’t normally feel worried about having my friends over for dinner. Usually, I’ll be covered in splashes of soup and partially dressed when they arrive, but tonight I feel nervous.

Figuring out who to invite was complicated. Not only did they have to be available at short notice, but they had to be up for it, open to something different. Because this evening everyone has been asked to bring a plus-one … someone who has died.

As my living guests begin to arrive, bringing in the dark and subtle nip of the October air, I have the strong sense that they are not alone. I take their coats and ask them for the photo of their guest. Out of their pockets come snapshots. Smiling portraits, a moment of laughter on the stairs, a child on the beach, the ruffled ears of a French bulldog, a matriarch blurred by clouds of cigarette smoke.

In the other room, it’s quiet. The table is laid with candles, autumn leaves from the park and bright flowers, and there are twice as many plates laid at the table as there will be people in the room. I put each photo in its place. Because this is where we will serve food to the dead. We will eat, sometimes in silence, but we’ll talk and remember and, probably, cry. This is a silent supper. A feast for the dead.

It isn’t something I’d even have thought to do if I hadn’t been hanging out with witches for the series Witch for BBC Sounds and Radio 4. I’ve rarely felt comfortable or at ease talking about the dead or talking to someone who’s grieving, but for witches this seems to be different. Over the past year I’ve taken part in seances, been to an ancestor ritual and made an ancestor bottle for the spirit of a loved one. Most witches have regular rituals and altars for their ancestors and, of course, they have a dedicated season for remembrance. Witches believe that on 31 October, or Samhain, the “veil” is thin. It’s a skin between life and death that becomes more porous throughout October until, on this night, life and death can pour into each other – a lot like the world we see around us.

There are twice as many plates at the table as people in the room

This is the idea we play with at Halloween when ghouls and night terrors come knocking at our door. There’s a playfulness and joy at the idea of the afterlife being present, but in reality it’s so far out of reach. This year, I’ve decided to search for meaningful ways to remember the dead.

I decided that hosting a silent supper – historically known as a “dumb supper” – could be a good start. Eating in silence and feasting for the dead has been part of life for centuries. In England, there used to be a tradition called “chesting”.

Prof Diane Purkiss, author of English Food: A People’s History, explains: “This was even more of an Irish wake than an Irish wake. It involved having a feast that was laid out on the coffin of the deceased person. A massive blowout meal with huge treats and sugary goo. It’s honouring the dead, but it’s also quite visceral because you’re doing it on the coffin and it almost brings them physically into the feast.”

A silent supper is one step further. “What you’re describing is a ritual around the scariest and most taboo thing, which is the dead,” she says, “and this is because witches have a very special relationship with them. I define a witch as someone who doesn’t see the dead the way other people do.”

That’s certainly true. Last year my friend, colleague and witch Tatum Swithenbank reached the age at which a much loved and needed auntie had died. So their coven held a silent supper. “Sometimes we just want a space to talk about the people who have passed and there’s not really any great comfort you can give in words,” they told me. “What’s better than listening in a neutral space? That was the power of it. I don’t think you have to be a witch or be practising to do that.” They ate cheese, skull-shaped pizzas and a pumpkin pie.

Feeling underqualified to host my own silent supper, I ask for advice. “Making it dark, with only candles, really helps because people feel they are not as exposed,” says Tatum. “And it’s important to say something at the beginning. I acknowledged that grief is messy and complicated.” Another witch who loves a silent supper is Emma Griffin, who shares the ritual with her children. “It’s really nice for them to know their heritage,” she says. “We’ll have supper and talk about death, look through photos and also talk about death bringing changes. This year we are making food that my dad would like – meat and potato pie, mash and gravy.”

She advises me to make the space sacred and gentle. “I suggest giving people a dress code. When they come over your threshold, give them a little tealight. Remember, it’s a celebration of life. And you want to burn myrrh,” she says, gently but firmly as she talks me through my first ever online myrrh purchase. “It will smoke a lot, so don’t panic.”

The most pressing question of all is what on earth am I going to feed the dead? “Traditionally, the dead seem to want luxury foods,” says Purkiss. “They tend to eat dessert first, you know, life is short, eat dessert first. The dead always feel undervalued and in a way it makes them shirty so you are trying to get them to a position where they feel you value them.”

So, before the event, I threw myself (and my partner) into planning a six-course feast, my guests constantly in mind, especially the dead ones. What would they want? What would we give them if we had the chance again?

I bring Grandma Suzette. The family rarely talks about her

Purkiss approves. “Isn’t that what we all want?” she says. “When someone dies, virtually the first thing you feel is, ‘Oh, if only. If only I’d done this, or if only I’d found the time’. And the whole point of the ceremony is to give yourselves the healing chance to show great aunt Sarah you did really care.”

On the night itself, I choose to bring Grandma Suzette, who I have never met. She died when my dad was a baby. The family rarely talk about her. As my own son turned one, the loss of her for my dad and his siblings, and for me, started to ring loudly in my body. I am desperate to grieve for her.

And that’s what we’re here to do tonight. There’s a lot of normal party noise in the kitchen, but when we enter the dining room, absolutely brimming with myrrh smoke, everything softens. First, we light a candle and welcome our dead guests to the table. It feels a little strange, but maybe it should be normal. After all, eating for – and even with the dead – was once a living tradition, one that’s been purposefully rubbed away.

“There was this way of seeing the dead as beings that you interact with,” says Purkiss, adding that Catholic death rituals, such as kissing ornately decorated bones of saints, or praying in huge ossuaries stacked with bodies, went out during the Reformation. “Protestants threw all of that out, partly because they thought it had become a bit of a scam and it probably had in some cases. But the phrase throwing out the baby with the bathwater comes powerfully to mind.”

And she might be right, because it’s only minutes into the evening when it becomes painfully, joyfully clear that everyone around the table needs this communion with the dead. The phrase “I haven’t allowed myself to grieve” comes up time and again. One friend hasn’t allowed herself to grieve for her mum for 11 years. Another drifted from someone she adored and never felt she had permission to mourn them. A pal describes her love and grief for her dog Buddy as tied up with her longing for a baby. We also share joy and memories. My sister brings my other hilarious, powerful granny. A friend shares the story of a grandad who brought him pure and uncomplicated joy.<

The talking is a release, but so is acknowledging the empty places. “People did that a lot after the First World War,” Purkiss says. “They would lay places at Christmas dinner for people who had died. It makes sense.” There are three mini courses that we eat without speaking. We reflect or we write, and then we burn things we wished we could say to them.

As the courses continue to roll out, my guests talk about how much their plus-ones would have loved the feast, the wine. The chance to eat dessert again and again. We make them feel loved through food. Buddy the dog would have had a field day.

We eat too much, raise glasses of sweet mead to everyone, say the names of people out loud many, many times. We look each other straight in the eyes. No one shies away from death. By the end we all stink of myrrh, but it is as though something had shifted, for all of us. For me, I know how to talk about my grandma now, and I cannot wait to keep celebrating the people I miss in my life.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

November 18, 2022November 17, 2022

Cooking Can Help Us Grieve, Heal, and Process Our Emotions

—Here’s Why

By Kayla Hui

Recently, I flipped the last page of Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. For those of you who haven’t read it, the memoir is about Zauner growing up Korean in the United States, navigating life without her mother—who passed away after battling an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer—and rediscovering her identity. Down to its core, it’s a touching and fill-your-heart-up story about how cooking and food can help us heal after losing people we love (and warning: reading the book will make you sob).

Whether you cook or not, grief experts confirm that preparing dishes that loved ones used to make for us can play a crucial role in processing grief. To better understand the science, we spoke with a few professionals to learn how cooking can help us heal from loss. And in this week’s episode of the Well+Good Podcast, we had a conversation with Frankie Gaw, author of the new cookbook First Generation: Recipes from My Taiwanese-American Home and Susan Krauss Whitbourne, PhD, psychology professor Emerita at University of Massachusetts, Amherst to talk about the profound healing power of food and cooking.

Taste, memory, and keeping loved ones alive through our meals

Cooking is a sensory experience, involving touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing. Of all the senses, though, “the sense most strongly tied with memory is olfactory,” aka our sense of smell, says Peggy Loo, PhD, a licensed psychologist and director of Manhattan Therapy Collective based in New York. When we cook, we activate the hippocampus and amygdala, which are parts of the brain involved in memory and emotional processing.

Research shows that human olfaction can cue emotional aspects of our memory, most of which comes from the first decade of our life. “This is why certain smells can elicit visceral reactions and evoke memories from long ago,” says Shavaun McGinty, MA, LPC, CT, a licensed professional counselor and certified grief counselor at the Peacemaker Center in Dowingtown, Pennsylvania. This process is what some experts refer to as the “Proust phenomenon”—at the beginning of Proust’s novel, Swann’s Way, he details a scenario in which the taste and smell of a madeleine cookie dipped in a cup of tea brings back a character’s long-forgotten memory in detail.

What’s more, cooking helps us grieve is by minimizing the fear of forgetting our loved ones, whether it’s “their voice, their laugh, or that one facial expression they had when they were about to sneeze,” says Dr. Loo. “Knowing that our sense of smell is powerfully tied to memories means that you can access them when cooking dishes we associated with our loved one.”

By following recipes that our loved ones used to make for us or recreating dishes we once shared with friends and family, we keep the memory of a loved one or passed experience alive. In a way, the aromas and scents of the meal help us travel back in time—whether that means apples and cinnamon from your mother’s apple pie or in my case, the steaming broth from hot pot. Cooking is what keeps us connected to loved ones after they’re gone.

When we lose that special someone in our life, it’s also not uncommon to feel like we lost a piece of ourselves, including our cultural identity. However, cooking can be a way to honor cultural ties, or the passing on of something you had with a loved one, explains Dr. Loo.

Like Zauner, I, too, grew up Asian in America and lost a loved one: my gong gong (grandfather in Cantonese), who immigrated to the United States in the mid-1950s to start a better life. When he passed away from a heart attack in 2002, not only did my family fall apart (he was the glue that held us together), I felt like I lost a large part of my Chinese identity.

A chef, my gong gong cooked for a living and for family, but his death meant that Cantonese dishes—stir-fried clams in black bean sauce, garlic-infused green beans, and steamed fish with ginger and scallions—were no longer served at the dinner table. Though his death occurred when I was just six years old, I’ve come to realize that I felt the gravity of it most in college, where I grappled with feeding myself and realizing that I couldn’t cook traditional Chinese food. I didn’t learn any of my gong gong’s recipes, and he was the only one in my family who knew them. I felt ashamed and disconnected to my identity. However, I found solace in the aisles of Asian grocery stores, picking and reminiscing foods and snacks he used to make for me, and learning recipes online. And in making a bold attempt to cook a version of my gong gong’s Cantonese food at home, I felt more connected to him and my culture.

Grief looks differently for everyone, but cooking is the glue that binds us closer together. “It can be helpful to plan intentional pockets of space for your grief—like the one you might have cooking a meal from beginning to end,” Dr. Loo says.

Whether you’ve lost a parent, sibling, grandparent, or friend, cooking is the driver that reconnects us, grounds us, and helps us heal.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

June 19, 2016June 19, 2016

The Decision to Stop Eating at the End of Life

Stopping Eating and Drinking to Regain Control at the End of Life

By Angela Morrow, RN

The decision to voluntarily stop eating and drinking at the end of life is a choice a patient makes with the intent to hasten the dying process.

Is It Suicide?

No. This is a choice made by patients who are already at the end of their life. A dying person will naturally lose interest in food and fluids and progressively become weaker. When the dying person decides to stop eating and drinking altogether, the process of progressive weakness leading to death occurs days to weeks sooner than would happen if the person were to continue eating and drinking.

To learn more about this expected loss of interest in food and drink, read Where Did Your Appetite Go?

Why Would a Dying Person Choose to Stop Eating?

Most people who choose to voluntarily stop eating and drinking do so to regain or maintain some control over their situation. Reasons people give for making this decision include the desire to avoid suffering, not to prolong the dying process and to take control over the circumstances surrounding their death.

What Kind of Patient Chooses to Stop Eating?

According to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, which surveyedhospice nurses in Oregon who cared for patients who chose to voluntarily stop eating and drinking, the typical patient is elderly and considers himself to have poor quality of life.

Do Persons Who Choose to Stop Eating Suffer?

Overwhelming evidence says no. The same study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that 94 percent of nurses reported these patients’ deaths as peaceful.

The cessation of eating and drinking is a normal part of the dying process that typically occurs days to weeks before death. Once the body becomes mildly dehydrated, the brain releases endorphins which act as natural opioids, leading to euphoria and often decreased pain and discomfort. When a dying person voluntarily stops eating and drinking, the same process occurs, and they may report feeling better than when taking in nutrition.

Very few patients complain of feeling hungry or thirsty after the first couple of days. Mucous membranes may become dry as dehydration sets in, which is why some patients may want to moisten their mouth with drops of water for comfort.

See: Acts of Love: Caring for a Dying Loved One.

When death by voluntarily stopping of eating and drinking was compared with death resulting from physician-assisted suicide, nurses reported that patients in the former group had less suffering and less pain, and were more at peace than those in the latter group. Nurses reported that both groups had a high quality of death, which sounds strange but means that their deaths proceeded with lower levels of pain and struggle.

How Long after Does Death Occur?

Once a person stops eating and drinking, death usually occurs within two weeks. The person may continue to take small amounts of water to swallow pills or moisten the mouth, and these small sips of fluids may prolong the dying process by a couple of days.

See: The Dying Process: A Journey.

Is Voluntarily Stopping of Eating and Drinking Right for Me?

This is likely a question you never thought you’d ask. But if you are, be sure to discuss this with your physician. She will likely want to make sure that there aren’t treatable conditions, such as depression or untreated pain, that are contributing to your decision. She may also refer you to a social worker or a member of your religious organization (if applicable) to discuss this decision further.

No one can tell you whether you should voluntarily stop eating and drinking. Depending on your quality of life, amount of suffering and personal belief system, you can decide if this choice is right for you.

Complete Article HERE!