Opinion: Grieving with food: The Thanksgiving Way

“Can you please make it?” I asked my grandmother, begging her to make her famous Cherries Jubilee. It was a simple but oh-so-perfect dish.

All it took for my grandmother’s version was Kroger’s finest Cool Whip, a can of cherry pie filling — brand name or generic — and a couple squirts of lemon juice. My grandmother would add pineapple in the summertime for a light kick.

“OK, but you’ll have to help me,” my grandmother told me. All she truly wanted, and what any grandparent wants during Thanksgiving, is time with their beloved grandchildren.

So my grandmother would rip the lid off the Cool Whip container, pour all of the ingredients into it and stir. It only takes about 10 seconds for the red of the cherry pie filling to engulf the white fluffy whipped cream.

Once she was done mixing, she scooped it into a bowl, and it would be ready for my family to eat. The dish would be gone within minutes, as my siblings and I would inhale the sweet treat.

That was how I remembered my grandmother, but there was a time when we lost touch.

I didn’t go to my grandmother’s funeral. I sometimes think how proud she would be of me.

I was afraid that by not attending her funeral, I somehow lost my special connection with her, but a trip to Kroger years later helped me realize that she’s not that far away.

Recalling memories

Years after my grandmother passed, I found myself at a Kroger, shopping for Thanksgiving dinner. I walked through the cooler section, not expecting to buy anything. But then I came across an old memory.

There they were, containers of Cool Whip, one on top of the other, in the top row of the cooler.

“Make sure you get the one in the back,” I recalled my grandmother saying to me on our trips to the grocery store. So I did just that.

Since I now had the key ingredient to the Cherries Jubilee, I decided to make my way to the baking aisle to find cherry filling and lemon juice.

Back home, I got out the ingredients and began to prepare the Cherry’s Jubilee. I mixed like my grandmother taught me. I ate a big scoop of it. The flavor was just how I remembered it.

I started to cry. Not a loud cry but a gentle cry, filled with sadness but also with a feeling of compassion. There was beauty in the pain of the moment. Something led me to that cooler aisle where I reconnected with my grandmother and her favorite Thanksgiving dish.

Her memory was still with me. And that was all right with me.

Memories through food

I find my grandmother in the Cherries Jubilee that she taught me to make years ago. I also find her every time I bite into a hot dish without blowing on it first. “Now see what happens when you don’t cool it off first?” she would often tell me.

Food is how I connect to my grandmother, and that’s how so many others connect with their loved ones who’ve passed.

We all carry grief and loss; that’s part of our shared humanity. But in our Thanksgiving celebrations, in the side dishes, the main dishes or the desserts on the table, we find connection to our loved ones no longer with us. Those go-to Thanksgiving recipes, shared with family and friends, link us together in traditions that are passed down from generation to generation.

As you gather with family, carve the turkey and share stories, throw the pigskin around afterward to prepare for the big game, remember these traditions. Let love move through you this day of gratitude.

With loss comes suffering but also acknowledgment, understanding and compassion.

I hope you encounter all three this Thanksgiving.