Food and Death

Note: The following was written in the spring of 2003. Famed author Fannie Flagg ("Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe", among other works) visited our school then. On her visit to our library, Ms. Flagg was presented with a book library staff had gathered from school faculty and staff. The book featured memories of growing up in the South as well as uniquely Southern recipes. My friend, Sharon, works for the library and recently recalled my essay for this project and requested it be posted here. So, here it is, as it appeared in 2003, complete with a recipe for sweet iced tea. Sharon, thanks!

Death is one of those things we all experience. It seems to be something that also unites and reunites those of us who were blessed enough to be born and reared in the South and those of us who choose to live here after being born and reared here and who always seem to be drawn back here, irretrievably, no matter where we roam. Somehow in the midst of all this birthing and rearing in the South the lonesome experience of death is also present and almost always tied in with food.

My mother’s father died on the second day of October 1975. I was eleven years old on that autumn Thursday and had never entertained the idea that my grandfather, an ordinary man who stood ten feet tall in my eyes, would ever die. I had been grocery shopping with my parents that evening. As we came home, our telephone was ringing. It was my mom’s youngest brother urgently telling her he believed their father, my Papaw, was dying. As my mom and dad left I retreated a few hundred yards away to my brother’s house. As I walked there, an ambulance siren screamed in the distance. I recall stopping in my tracks as I watched the ambulance pass by realizing where it was going.

A few hours later, my dad returned with the news that Papaw had died. It was my first experience with death. It hasn’t been my last experience with the cold, clammy hands of mortality but looking back I understand it as an experience that still flavors my life to this day.

Two days later, my grandfather’s funeral took place. As we drove from the funeral home to the church, cars pulled to the side of the road out of respect for the deceased, in this case for my grandfather, and for our grieving family. In a white framed church in one of the most rural parts of already rural north Georgia, a congregation sang the grand ole hymn, “Farther Along”. Aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, or as some in the family refer to those who have earned their designation in the family by marriage, outlaws, were all there. After the eulogy, my grandfather was rolled out of the church in his casket to be laid to rest at the top of the hill in the cemetery behind the building. Only then, as his casket rolled past me and my family, did I cry…and I cried like I had been whipped. I also discovered during this time most everyone who knows you has no idea what to say or to do to make you feel any better although they try desperately.

Later that evening, our family gathered at my grandmother’s house. Her nine children and their spouses and their children crowded together to share a meal. Neighbors and church ladies had supplied plenty of food, no doubt some of it having grown in nearby gardens just a few weeks earlier. I recall there being some laughter there that evening as we sat down together. I couldn’t understand that at the time. I didn’t fully understand how the uniting and reuniting of those whose blood we share is part of the healing process. I also didn’t understand then the therapeutic powers cornbread, fried chicken and gravy, pinto beans and banana pudding have when the world has become a place where one of your heroes is no longer around.

Every third Sunday in August is Homecoming and Decoration Day where my grandfather is buried. It is one of those picturesque times of the year, every year, mind you, that many in small Southern towns can’t imagine life without. Family members return and bring flowers to adorn the graves of loved ones. The whole ritual is about missing and remembering those who have gone on to their reward and in some small way honoring what they still mean to us. We gather in the church for preaching and later outside the church building for dinner on the ground. Once again, food unites us in death.

Time has moved on swiftly since my grandfather died. I rarely get back for Homecoming and Decoration Day. I have buried the rest of my grandparents and other family members since then as well. With each death, we have been surrounded by family, friends and neighbors and by food…good Southern food like fried corn, fresh green onions, leather britches, chicken and dumplings, apple stack cake, cracklin’ bread and lots of sweet iced tea.

With each death it has also become clearer to me that those you know still struggle with ways to console you. They hug you and tell you how much your loved one meant to them and you often hear the words of your deceased loved one ringing in your memory about this person saying how they always had a ‘good turn to them’. These people you know almost always ask you to let them know if there is anything they can do to help. They realize though, as you already understand too well, nothing short of a miracle the width, depth and breadth of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead can really make things as they were. Maybe this is why when someone dies in the small town South, neighbors and church ladies still fill dining room tables with home-cooked food, fresh garden-grown vegetables and desserts whose recipes are passed from generation to generation by memory. It is one very significant way people show they care. At a time in your life when the world seems darker than it ever has that care and concern mean more than you could ever express or maybe even comprehend. As you sit there with your family recalling good times and lamenting how we only see each other anymore at funerals you are filled with food and memories and your own mortality. Somewhere though creeps in the comforting knowledge as you look around at these people you love so much that there is a place where you belong and you know it is with them.

Sweet Iced Tea
Fill a mid-sized pan three-quarters full with cold water.
Place five tea bags in the water and bring to a boil.
Brew until the tea turns a muddy ruddy color.
Remove pan from stove.
Pour the contents of the sauce pan into an old clean plastic milk jug or large glass container.
Add cold water to fill the jug or container until it is about three-quarters full.
Add sugar to taste.
Cap the jug and shake well or use a large spoon to stir the contents of the glass container until the sugar dissolves.
Chill.
A few hours later, serve, preferably in a large glass with lots of ice.
Fresh lemon, not lemon juice, optional.