Tuna Salad Sandwiches and Changing Our Relationship with Grief
How sorrow and beauty live in tandem with one another
Last week a dear friend left me a voicemail late at night. I’d been experimenting with the “do not disturb” mechanism on my phone so I didn’t listen to her message until early the next morning. After almost two years of suffering with pancreatic cancer—the same disease my own mother died from almost 20 years ago—her mom had taken her last breath.
I immediately called back and she answered after half a ring. I listened to her cry. I asked questions. I let the pauses in between our dialogue breathe because sometimes grief needs nothing more than a warm body to let you know you’re not alone. She eventually broke our silence. Her voice cracked and wobbled out a question, a plea for peace. When does it get easier, she asked. It doesn’t get easier, I told her. It just changes.
We all experience loss. Some are profound and unimaginable. The loss of a child, the unexpected death of a loved one, the loss of innocence or control by way of unwanted force. We lose faith in humanity when we witness or experience someone being unfathomably terrible to someone else, or to us. Almost seven years ago—a decade after losing my mom—I lost hope in love when my husband filed for divorce from me when I was six months pregnant. I’m happy to report I reseeded that loss and have felt love in countless other ways since.
Despite the sorrow that grief drowns us in, it is always—like nearly everything else—a paradox. Where there is heartbreak and anguish there is the imminent certainty that you will one day experience profound love, joy, and pleasure. And had you not plodded through loss, you would not appreciate those beautiful moments quite as much. One can not exist without the other. There is no beauty and meaning without any instances of pain.
When my mom was alive she used to make tuna salad sandwiches. I was repulsed by the smell. It reminded me of the wet cat food we forked into the ceramic bowls that fed our Siamese cats Bastet and Pyewacket, named after the Egyptian feline goddess and the witch’s cat in the 1950 play “Bell, Book and Candle.” Despite being a badass corporate leader at her place of work, my mom always waved a freak flag at home.
When I was pregnant with my first child, five years after her death, I suddenly developed a bizarre craving for those sandwiches. I wanted hunks of canned tuna, swimming in mayonnaise, with crunchy bits of celery and fresh dill, smeared across toasted rye. I’d eat those tuna salad sandwiches and think of my mother and how shocked she would be if she knew I was devouring them. I smiled at the idea of us crying with laughter over my overnight attraction to canned fish.
It took time, but my loss had evolved into a small moment of joy. It shape-shifted itself into a tactile thread that connected me to someone who was no longer there. This week I made an open faced tuna salad on whole grain bread and covered it with melted Swiss and chives and I smiled at the memory of her sparkling green eyes.
Today, as I mother my three boys, who are quickly growing into young men, I’ve stopped yearning for my mother’s presence. I feel less hollowed by her void. Instead, I chuckle when my six-year-old draws a picture of butt cheeks and scribbles misspelled words that read you are an ass and hands the picture to his older brother. I also cry when my boys asks what it’s like to live without a mother and I pray that they never need to say goodbye to me, though I know for certain one day they will.
Does it get easier? No. It never does. Does it get more beautiful? Absolutely. But in order to appreciate the beauty sometimes we need to embrace the pain.
Soundtrack:
Food for Thought:
“Listen. I wish I could tell you it gets better. But, it doesn't get better. You get better.” ~ Joan Rivers
I had a Siamese stuffed animal in the 1970's named Pyewacket!
Super tender, AS. I love your examples of how she still shows up in your life on the daily.