Remembering Through Food

How we Honor our Loved ones

Last night, hosting a boisterous birthday party, I found myself raising a forkful of deliciously smoked salmon in memory of a dear friend who had passed a few hours earlier in the day. Hospitalized in Buenos Aires 4306 miles away from my current location she had chosen to forgo a final round of chemo in her home state of Alaska which is currently experiencing 6 hours of daylight and 17 degrees with snow. When she left for Central and South America she knew she was taking a risk by defying the doctor’s advice to jump on the new symptoms immediately and resume IV chemo. She’d been there/done that before and decided if her days were limited, she wanted to spend them in warmth, visiting friends, seeing new faces and places and enjoying vibrant vistas and exotic foods. With Medevac insurance under her belt and her indomitable can do spirit, she hopped down to Mexico, cruised around the Galapagos Islands and flew to Buenos Aires to spend Christmas with her son. And there she got sick, hospitalized and eventually too critical to be get airlifted out in time to get back to her friends and family back home.

Of all my friends, Mary challenged me the most about food and my “picky habits.” We’ve known each other for 35 years since meeting in film school in NYC. After graduating with our masters I moved to LA to attempt Hollywood and she moved back to Alaska where she continued to make documentaries about social justice, marginalized groups, cancer, the environment and the U.S. health care system. We started our families and kept in touch, visiting over the years but never again lived in the same town. When we did see each other, it was on vacations or work travel for her which would always include exploring new foods. At least that was her hope. She grew up in the Mid-west with typical American farm food; I was privy to both my mother’s and grandmother’s French cuisine. She could eat anything and everything, loved all food and never worried about weight gain. I started my dieting at age 16 and have residual habits even 5 decades later. While she loved rich, creamy dishes and large portions, I’ve always preferred vegetarian or lighter cuisines like Thai, Vietnamese and more recently, Vegan. No matter where we went to eat, she would worry that I wouldn’t eat what she liked, which was true, and that I wouldn’t enjoy something new just for the sake of trying something new, often true. I never really understood why it was so important to her, aside from her concerns that I was too skinny (but never any more so than she). It guess she needed a partner to enjoy food with in order to validate the experience she wanted.

I tried hard over the years, without giving up my veggie forward meals, to join her enthusiasm for the heavy and often huge plates I could never imagine eating. I would vocally appreciate the ingredients of my meals and how pretty hers looked. When we cooked together, I always looked for compromise recipes and added a salad. And when, as an Alaska resident, she collected her limit of 20 sockeye salmon annually, I would receive a FedEx delivery of frozen fillets that would delight my kitchen for months to come. This last year, a few found their way into our new smoker and I was so happy to not only experience this almost fresh fish at home 2,340 mile away but to share a food that we could both love in common without question. She loved to cook for people, to feed those in need and to share the tastes she herself adored. And so I understand how frustrating it must have been to have a friend who didn’t really like or need or share her desire for food in the way she did. We simply spoke different languages in the kitchen. And yet our friendship survived and focused on that which we did love in common: great people, our children, our dogs, our work, nature, beauty and kindness. She did things her way and modeled a set of values that focused on present joys, culinary and others, even as she worked with difficult topics and her own mortality.

The salmon last night was moist, smokey and slightly sweet. She would have loved it and the side dishes as well, fried tofu, coconut rice, homemade spring rolls, salad, chicken wings, finished off with carrot cake and lemon curd, surrounded by new people, laughter and storytelling. In this meal I felt her approval as I ate heartily and remembered not what we couldn’t hold in common but that which we could. I raised my fork to the memory of her gusto and appetite for a life lived fully. May I honor that tradition, even in my own way, one taste at a time focusing on the delight in tethering food and good friends across cuisines.

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