Day-of-Death Chili

On face book, I wrote: Yesterday sucked. Today, I took a nap, ignored the mail, and made chili. And that was life affirming.

Yesterday, I had so much help -- doing a bit of PTO work with Amy and Suzanne, and then having Mary for company as I went through the ton of mail from the last two weeks. Mary took Julia and I on a campus tour, and I was shocked that in the three years I've been in Madison, I have never been to the student center or any other of the old buildings on campus. So now we have a start at that. It is a lovely campus, and there for us to enjoy -- the center faces the lake where sail boats play. All very peaceful the week before school opens. Still, we need to take advantage of it.

Mary made sure we had something to eat -- no one has ever had to do that for me before -- and dropped us at home. Julia and I watched a movie and then went to bed. Together. I took cold meds and went to sleep.

And slept a long time.

So, today, waking up coughing, still with this cold, I resolved to concentrate on the cold and nothing else, except Julia of course. Funny about this cold, (I am an awful, awful patient!!) my irrational mind now equates grief with feeling sick. Although the two may be related in some way, the truth is that I don't have to be sick to grieve. I found time during Julia's clinic time to come back home and take a nap, and after almost two hours of sleep, I felt the surge of a little energy.

Just a little but enough to carry my through the rest of the day.

And I made chili.

Yeah, it is hot, hot, hot outside, but this is not ordinary chili, this is day-of-death chili.

The day that David died, I felt I had a mound of chores to do. We had no food in the house, so shopping. Julia was really dirty, so bath. And I wanted to have something that Cheshire and I could eat at any time, so chili. (We had most of the fixings because David had planned to make it the weekend he was hospitalized). I was going to do it all while Cheshire went to the hospital that morning, but Cheshire volunteered to do all of my tasks while I visited with David. This was lovely at the time, but in retrospect, it was a best gift that Cheshire has ever given. If she had gone to the hospital, and I had done my tasks (tasks which made me very stressed at the time), I would not have been with David when he died. And I so needed to be there.

So, I went to the hospital, and Cheshire shopped and bathed Julia. And she took out all the makings for chili, including two pounds of chopped beef. It was then that I called her to come to the hospital.

Much later that day, when my friend, Cathy, came over to oversee what was going on with Julia (she was in therapy most of the day, but I wanted Cathy there because I had no idea how long we would be at the hospital). At some point, Cathy figured out what was up with all the stuff in the kitchen, and decided she would saute the defrosted beef and put it in the frig. Later still, I put the cooked meat in the freezer and there it stayed until today.

Today, after my nap and picking up Julia from clinic, I took that meat out of the freezer, opened all those cans of beans that were gathering dust in the cupboard, and started making chili. As I cut garlic and onions and celery and carrots, I realized that I had not made chili in a really long time. That was David's task and he loved making big pots of chili for us and for office pitch-ins. We always had some in the freezer for quick suppers. And it was delicious. Just before he went into the hospital, he had given Cheshire directions for chili one evening, and Cheshire making chili the morning was sweet practice. But today, I was making chili. My own chili. And it is not bad. Not David's, but not bad.

And that has to be good enough now.

Mommy's Day-of-Death Chili.