Food, Memory, and Healing: A Grief Journey

Summary: 

In this episode of Growth from Grief, host Susan Andersen discusses the challenges of celebrating birthdays and anniversaries after the loss of a loved one. She shares her personal experiences of navigating grief, particularly focusing on her son Ian's birthday. The conversation emphasizes the importance of keeping memories alive through food and shared experiences, while also acknowledging the emotional complexities tied to these rituals. Susan encourages listeners to create new traditions in remembrance of their loved ones and offers resources for those on their grief journey.

Takeaways

• The first year after loss is particularly challenging.
• Food often serves as a powerful memory trigger in grief.
• Creating new traditions can help in the healing process.
• Involving others in remembrance can be comforting.
• Rituals can provide structure and support during difficult times.

Thank you for listening!   Visit www.sueandersenyoga.com for Yoga for Grief classes and additional resources.

Transcript

Susan Andersen (00:00.824)
Hi everyone and welcome to this episode of Growth from Grief. I'm your host Sue Andersen. And in today's episode, I wanted to talk about birthdays and celebrations, especially during the first year after loss, how difficult that is. 

Last year, I created a podcast episode on how we celebrated my son's birthday a couple of years after he died. And for those of you who are new to the podcast, I just want to say welcome. Thank you for joining. And for those of you who are returning listeners, welcome back. 

So my son died in 2012. He died by suicide. And as I mentioned, it's a struggle, right? When you're in that first year after loss and you have all these first birthdays and adversaries, all kinds of things that you're dealing with, holidays. So I recorded this podcast last year about celebrating Ian's birthday with pie, which was his favorite thing. And I wanted to share that episode again with you. I've edited the episode a little bit. But his birthday is October 12th. 

This year he would have been 39. And it's still hard to believe that he's been gone. As many of you know, it seems like somebody's been gone forever, and then the next moment they've been gone since yesterday. It's just the way that it is in grief. And the reason I wanted to share this episode again is because I wanted to provide you with some ideas, some thoughts on how you can keep the memory of your loved one alive and maybe even bring a little joy

Susan Andersen (02:25.621)
to yourself and to others who are mourning the loss of this person. So without further ado, let's listen to this episode.

Hello, I'm Sue Andersen, grief guide and yoga teacher dedicated to helping individuals navigate the challenging journey of loss. Welcome to Growth from Grief, where I aim to offer strategies to transition from the depths of grief to the path of healing. Whatever loss you are grappling with, here you'll discover support to ease both the physical and emotional burdens of grief. Together, let's embark on a journey towards strength, peace, and healing. I'm so glad you are here.

Susan Andersen (03:36.813)
You experienced the difficulties of that first year after the loss where you are just trying to really navigate and figure out how to cope with all of these celebrations, holidays, weddings, and your persons, the person that you lost their birthday. And how to how to quote unquote celebrate it, right? mean, just mind boggling when I think back on it 12 years ago, I can actually feel the emotion, right? I actually can feel it, how I felt those 12 years ago. 

In 2014, so two years after Ian died, I had this idea of celebrating his birthday with the food that he liked to eat. And specifically, he did not want to have cake, he liked pie. So I don't know actually when this desire to have birthday pie started. I can't remember to be honest with you.

But the last time that we had birthday pie, two pies in fact, was 2011. So six months before he died we had a family celebration at an apple orchard. We did apple picking. I had made two pies and it was really wonderful. But that was the last time that we had celebrated and I'll talk a little bit more later in this podcast about food and memory and grief. For some reason in 2014, two years after he died, I had this idea that I wanted to engage and I wanted to have his friends especially and our family, people that loved him, to, to feel good about his birthday. 

Susan Andersen (05:59.54)
And so I had encouraged everyone to either eat pie or make a pie and to share it or to just spread kindness that day because he was a very kind person. One of Ian's friends shortly after he died had started a Facebook page and so I posted on the Facebook page about the idea of this pie and I also posted on my personal page. People really responded to that. Made pie, had a piece of pie and Ian liked savory pies. I used to make chicken pot pie and he liked just about every fruit pie, I think.

Pies like coconut custard. Not only did I bake pies, but a very, very good friend of his mother also baked a lot of pies. So he had different pies at her house than he might have at my house, because I didn't make things like coconut cream, for example, or coconut custard.

So he had all kinds of pie that he could enjoy. So we did that in 2014 and I'm telling you it just really made me feel so good, so good that first of all people engaged with me with the post that they remembered him. And you know when you're grieving and people don't really talk about your loss. They don't talk about your person. You think like, my gosh, it's his birthday or her birthday and nobody remembers. I've come to realize that is not the case. People remember these days, but sometimes they don't want to bother you, quote unquote. I don't want to upset you. I don't want to make you upset.

Susan Andersen (08:15.211)
The truth of the matter is we all want to hear the stories, the funny stories, the memories, the remembrances. We all want to hear that about our person. We want to hear their name. And also these other people, they want to hear it too. They miss their friends, their brother, their cousin, whoever that might be in relationship to them. So I think this idea of the pie and the sharing of idea of pie or just sharing kindness was just so great and it just made me feel very happy. I just remember that. And to this day, I still do it and I still post.

And, you know, I have had friends of Ian's that I didn't know or I don't remember who after I would post something like this just out of the blue would reach out to me and say, I was thinking about Ian and I saw your post and it's wonderful and you know this type of thing. it just you never know who you're going to touch. Right. 

So it's, It's touching you but also making other people happy. That's what I felt and that's what I still feel to this day. I crave that interaction. I'm sure you do too, but for your person. Let me talk about just food and memory and grief.

When I was in my 20s, I want to say late 20s, early 30s maybe, and my grandmother had died when I was in my early 20s. When I was young, we would go to my grandmother's house for Sunday dinner. And I just, you know, that was just a great time. I remember it, you know, pot roast or roast beef or something like that. Well,

Susan Andersen (10:39.779)
One day in my late 20s, I was going to somebody's house for a meeting and I opened the door and went into the kitchen and smelled just like my grandmother's house when she would cook pot roast. I was so taken aback by this. I was floored. I couldn't believe it. It just smelled like my grandmother's house. And I asked the woman, are you cooking anything?" And she said, no, no, I'm not cooking anything. And I said, I have to tell you, this smells like my grandmother's kitchen. Your kitchen smells like my grandmother's kitchen. And it gives me so much joy. And obviously, I still remember it, right? You know, 40 years ago, I just still remember that in my bones, I remember it.

Sometimes though it's difficult. So that was a very good memory of food, But sometimes it's difficult to think about what this person loved and maybe you can't make that dish anymore. So with Ian, I talked about the pie and I've made - apple pie, pumpkin pie, chicken pot pie, those he loved and I've been able to make those. But there's two things that I have not been able to make since he died. One is called butter bread and the other one is a cassoulet. I have not been able to make those and recently I just thought about well maybe I'll make the butter bread maybe I'll try that. 

Now I haven't done it yet but I pulled out the recipe and the cassoulet recipe I actually can't find. It was a recipe that I was hoping to find. I had cut it out of like a Bon Appetit magazine and it was Bon Appetit magazine just to have this section where people would write in with their recipes that they had gotten from a restaurant that they liked or they would write in and ask Bon Appetit to get a recipe from a restaurant they liked.

Susan Andersen (13:02.899)
So I had this recipe and he loved it, absolutely loved it. Well, now I can't find it. So I think I have to go to the library and look up old issues of Bon Appetit magazine. anyway, my point is I was not able and haven't been able to make that food. And it's okay, you know, it's all right.

Thinking about making the food was making me cry. So why am going to do that to myself? There's no reason that I need to be doing that. Just remembering that he liked it, maybe crying about that. But I don't have to make it again. And I was thinking about this because I was reminded of two essays that I've read.

Maybe one six months ago, the other one maybe a year ago. And one recipe that was, I mean, one essay that was from a couple of years ago was this woman who wanted to make a dessert that her mother had made. And she wasn't able to make it for 10 years or something. And she wrote about this time that she decided she would make it, but she made sure that no one else was home. So if she decided she didn't want to make it, if she was going to just break down when she tried to make it, she was by herself and that was more comfortable. So she described this feelings about the recipe and a little bit of story about her mother and the process of making this dessert and how she did finally make it.

Another essay that I read more recently was about a woman who had a son who also died, I believe, suicide or from a drug overdose. And he loved her French whipped potatoes. And it was a beautiful, beautiful tribute to her son and these potatoes, which she still makes.

Susan Andersen (15:25.488)
And I could just relate to these two about this food that is so tied to the person who made it or loved it that sometimes it's really difficult for us to make it ourselves, to keep it going. And that's powerful. Our senses, the smell of certain foods, the taste of certain foods. Maybe it's the memory of sharing, the time cooking, the chopping. So hearing the conversations, maybe the last time that somebody made that dish or that someone relished the dish that you made. Your hands working that dough if it was bread. So these memories of the food, it just lives in our whole body. And it's okay to not move forward with that recipe. 

Another person that I know, she had made a special shrimp dish always at these family celebrations and her brother really loved it and they really bonded over this shrimp. When he passed away, she found it really difficult to make this and she told me about times where one Christmas she could make it and then the next year she couldn't. She couldn't even take the the shrimp out of the freezer. It just it was so emotional for her.

Susan Andersen (17:26.202)
So I think that that's natural for us. It's nice memories. Maybe the emotion is a little softer as time goes by. But knowing that we had this connection with this person in our lives and we bonded over some kind of food I think is just really, really, really special. And so I want to have you think about this, someone in your life that maybe made a special dish and you enjoyed it, or you made something special for them and they're no longer here to enjoy it. You know, it's OK to make it or not make it.

And it's wonderful to have that memory and to have that experience. You know, if you are feeling like you want to try to make something and you don't know if you can do it yourself, have a friend or a family member come over and help. Better still, make that making of the dish part of the ritual of the birthday or the holiday and let other people kind of in on it, right? Get them to be involved and maybe change it up. It doesn't have to be the same thing. 

You can start with the foundation of whatever it was and change it up a little bit to make a new tradition on the foundation of that memory that you had with these other people. So I hope this episode resonates with you and also if this has helped you please please share it with someone else who is grieving.

Susan Andersen (19:51.97)
I hope this episode has given you some ideas of how you can celebrate the person that you lost when it's a birthday or an anniversary and keep a tradition alive if that's something that you want to do or change it up. If you're looking for more resources,

To help you during your grief journey, head on over to my website, sueandersenyoga.com and you'll find some classes. I have an upcoming Yoga for Grief series that will start October 14th, and I invite you to check out all of the material that I have available.

Thank you for listening and I'll see you in the next episode.