Life, Death, and Food

One of the biggest regrets my mother has was that she didn't feed my father the food he loved as he was dying from lung cancer. All the fried food that he loved, the old staples of my mother's kitchen were replaced with anti-oxident rich food that often tasted what I imagine bland rubber to taste like.
Reading the NYT article, "A Time in a Life for Pie and Beer" reminded me of my mother's slow acceptance of what she should have done with my father's care, but because of hope and last resorts, didn't allow herself. When someone you love is dying it is so hard to acknowledge that they will cease to exist. You push and push the huge rock up the hill, but eventually it will roll right over you.
Feeding my father "healthy" food made my mother, somehow believe, that it would slow his illness. Since my father's death my mother has also buried her mother and father - her attitude about care completely changed - I remember when my grandfather lay dying in the hospital my mother's main concern was to make him comfortable and although she tried to make my grandmother's meals more "healthy" urging her not to eat sugar (she was slightly diabetic) she did so quietly (my grandmother died suddenly, unlike my father or grandfather).
In retrospect it was funny when I was going through chemo to cure a very curable cancer, my mother lavished all kinds of bad food on me, because I craved it. Mashed potatoes and (bloody)steak were the staples in my mother's kosher home. Although she made drink the yukiest juice every morning (raw beet, 2 apples, carrots, and celery) - she never reprimanded me about or denied me food, letting me have the little pleasure I could.
Having been around terminally ill people and having come to the conclusion that it is better to have quality over quantity I was really struck by the closing of the article:

My father last sat for a family dinner two nights before he died. I’d been the only one in the kitchen, but it was as if two daughters had been cooking. One of us still believed she could rescue her father; she had fixed pork tenderloin in a no-salt marinade and a salad with oven-roasted tomatoes. The other daughter acknowledged something her father had come to understand years earlier. She’d put together a pudding that held nothing back. It had cream, five eggs, sugar and a transgressive dose of salt.

Hospice literature suggests that the dying often lose interest in food. My father did. He looked, mystified, at all I’d set out. “Now, who is going to eat this?” he marveled, and while everyone else ate, he and I just held hands.

Then, at the sound of a beer being opened, a mischievous light entered his face. “Hey,” he said. “I’ll have some of that!”

My sister caught my eye. We shrugged. There is a love that concerns itself with the tides inside the body, with organs and arteries (and the fact that alcohol and sublingual morphine don’t exactly mix). There at the table, I finally understood. We were past this kind of love.

It's hard to let go and accept the ultimate outcome - death, but when you do, so many priorities fall into place, it's the acceptance that is the hardest part. There's no trying, there's just being. And to be honest, I try to live, but often fail as though it's always time for beer and pie.