{"id":10828,"date":"2021-02-06T12:31:33","date_gmt":"2021-02-06T12:31:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=10828"},"modified":"2021-02-06T12:31:33","modified_gmt":"2021-02-06T12:31:33","slug":"chef-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2021\/02\/06\/chef-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Chef Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cTake me off!\u201d Dad directed all his anger at Mi Sun, an Asian nurse who barely spoke English. But now she understood him perfectly. For Rage is a universal language. Frantic, she phoned my sister and managed to communicate that despite my father\u2019s protests, she didn\u2019t have the authority to halt a patient\u2019s treatment in mid-dialysis. I was tired too and despite my weariness, found myself frying, flipping, and browning. Making meals up until the moment he would no longer be able eat. I\u2019d no choice but to continue. My dying father was living for my cooking, and for lack of a better title, I appointed myself, \u201cChef Death.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It was the least I could do. He\u2019d been enduring four-hour-long dialysis appointments, three days a week, for the last seventeen years. Even in 97 degree heat, he would conceal the gruesome shunt on his arm, with the long sleeve of a heavy sweatshirt. I for one, couldn\u2019t fathom what it felt like to have the blood drained from your body and rinsed \u201cclean,\u201d before then having it pumped back in again. He spent his last session screaming.<\/p>\n

In his youth, he\u2019d been an athlete, scouted by all three New York pro baseball teams. Turning his attention to drawing, he\u2019d supported a family of six on a freelance artist’s salary. But at that stage he could barely walk, and those graceful hands that won art awards and fielded line drives, now struggled to pick up a fork. He\u2019d had it. He\u2019d had it with my sister too. She\u2019d been living with him for five years, pleading that he adjust his diet, which might\u2019ve made life easier between dialysis sessions. Unfortunately, what made him happy, made him worse. However, with death imminent, hospice gave him the green light for unlimited amounts of comfort food.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m the middle daughter of a Sicilian mother. One who got bitten by the culinary bug. On a white sheet which stretched the length of our dining room table, I watched my grandmother lay freshly made ravioli.\u00a0 My job was to close the ends of each ravioli with a pinch.<\/p>\n

My mother was also a good cook, but her talents were wasted on my picky father\u2019s pedestrian palate.\u00a0 Once it was me on the frontline, I was a sleepwalking waitress. A glorified short order cook who didn\u2019t aim for extraordinary. I\u2019d been helping him for months prior to his hospice kicking in, carefully commuting from Covid ravished Queens to pandemic plagued Jersey.\u00a0 My sister assured me these efforts were appreciated, \u201cDad said you\u2019re great!\u201d\u00a0 He said, \u201cShe cooks, she cleans, and she drives!\u201d<\/p>\n

Irony, you are one serious Bitch. This was supposed to be my \u201cSummer of love.\u201d I\u2019d even burned foul smelling sage, while performing an embarrassing full moon ritual to declare this my \u201cSummer of love.\u201d But instead of primping for socially distanced dates, there I was, putting his preferred number of ice cubes in my father\u2019s plastic cup. Once when I was roasting chicken, out of nowhere my father says, \u201cLaura, I\u2019m going to introduce you to\u2026\u201dI stopped breathing. Did he actually have a contact that could be the glimmer of a potential boyfriend? I was psyched as he continued, \u201cI\u2019m going to introduce you to \u2026 the greatest sandwich on Earth \u2026 liverwurst and onions!\u201d\u00a0 I top off his Coke and cover my mouth. What was I thinking?\u00a0 He didn\u2019t have any romantic contacts for me, and even if he did, physically he wouldn\u2019t have been able to flip open his poor old phone.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d had a running sandwich feud over Levy\u2019s Rye bread. Because I\u2019d pronounced it, Levi\u2019s, like the jeans.\u00a0 Every time he asked me to buy this bread, I\u2019d say it wrong and he\u2019d go ballistic. \u201cIt\u2019s Levy\u2019s bread, not Levi\u2019s jeans!\u201d\u00a0 Dumbfounded, I\u2019d yell back, \u201cWho cares, Dad?\u00a0 Do you have stock in Levi\u2019s bread?\u201d In the supermarket, eyeing eleven brands of rye, I don\u2019t see the one he would want. About to give up, I spotted it, that glistening gem in a sea of plastic packaging. Levy\u2019s Real Jewish Rye. I grabbed it like I was Leonardo DiCaprio in Blood Diamond, only to return home and commit the sin of mispronunciation. \u201cDad, I got Levi\u2019s bread!\u201d\u00a0 He was speechless.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re ninety and stop dialysis, the expectation is that you\u2019ll be dead in a few days, or well on your way to a kind of sleepy incoherence. This is what the hospice nurse had said in private. But my father\u2019s mind was running at full capacity about his empty stomach. \u201cI\u2019ll take four pancakes, one at a time.\u201d I obliged while he explained his reasoning. \u201cIf you give me two pancakes at once, by the time I finish the first, the second one is cold.\u201d His pancakes also had to be five inches in diameter and I was careful to adhere to those measurements. He was even more exacting about maple syrup distribution and didn\u2019t trust me with the task. As he took the bottle from my hand, I watched him start from the center, then pour a perfect circle around the piping hot pancake, as if he was putting the finishing touches on one of his water colors. Inhaling, I stifled my impatience. \u201cLet me do it,\u201d he said. \u201cNo one lets me do anything anymore. I can still do things!\u201d<\/p>\n

How horrible, trying to control the one thing he could and wanted do. My sister alleviated that guilt by reminding me I was sleep deprived. I\u2019d been up since 5:45 am hunting for non-existent car keys my father said fell under his hospital bed. This wasn\u2019t how I imagined my \u201cSummer of love,\u201d crawling around in my underwear to appease my father\u2019s nightmare. As a result of the three Extra Strength Tylenol my sister-in-law had given him for his excruciating pain, he was hallucinating. Again.<\/p>\n

We persuaded him to take Lorazepam, a hospice drug that alleviates agitation and induces deep sleep.\u00a0 As the night aide, Agar, wheeled Dad into his room, he placed his breakfast order, \u201cTomorrow, one egg sunny-side up and four sausages.\u201d For all my father\u2019s fascism about food, his soft side was equally extreme. Dad insisted his day aide, Sunday, a six-foot-two Nigerian man, abandon whatever he\u2019d brought to eat on his break, in favor of sharing a meal with my father. I was raised by a working-class artist who never employed people. If he understood the concept, it was only to firmly reject it. Our rotating 24\/7 aides were treated as any guest would be. Dad was delighted when they would break Levy\u2019s bread and drink Margaritas with him. In this way the atmosphere here was less hospice and more of a Happy Hour<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In between meals, my father asked me a sobering question; what will I miss when I die?\u00a0 I confessed I had never thought about it. But he had, \u201cI\u2019ll miss the trees.\u201d This made sense. When he retired from commercial art, he painted landscapes for fun. Trees and sky were among his favorite subjects.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ll miss their leaves blowing in the wind.\u201d His response seemed so simple, and even simpler that I could love him more for missing trees, even if his answer to that question wasn\u2019t me.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, he requested veal cutlets with A LOT of garlic. He spouted his specifications all day. \u201cGo to the butcher. Have him pound the veal thin. Ask him to pound the cutlets very thin.\u201d My sister bought veal at the supermarket where there was no real butcher. And they weren\u2019t thin. Using the back of my knife, I pounded with Sweeney Todd vengeance. They were haemorrhaging as my father shouted, \u201cDon\u2019t pound!\u00a0 It\u2019s too much work!\u201d But as long as I pounded, he thrived.\u00a0 My nurse friend had warned me that his demise could get ugly. But we were over a week in and he wasn\u2019t even puffy yet. My food was magic!\u00a0 I put in the extra garlic, parmesan, parsley, and breadcrumbs, combining ingredients until all the flavors came together. My hands worked independently of my body. All my life I\u2019d hated my hands. They were my mother\u2019s hands. It never made sense that my slender body should lead to these chubby, tapered elf fingers that didn\u2019t match the rest of me. I felt my mother took control as I chopped, breaded and fried, finally internalizing why I inherited these hands from her. They weren\u2019t meant to be pretty. They were destined for a purpose.<\/p>\n

Delivering the cutlet to my father met with silence, until\u2026\u201cThis is so delicious,\u201d he said, almost like he was praying. He asked for another, insisting his aide Menoushka and I experience the same bliss.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t had this dish in twenty years. Welcome back to my mouth veal cutlets. You\u2019re perfect.<\/p>\n

As a girl, my father tucked me in to bed, so It seemed fitting that at the end of his life, I return the favor. Curling up behind him, I floated my arm over his body and sang, \u201cGood night Sweetheart, \u2019til we meet tomorrow.\u201d He joined in, \u201dGoodnight, Sweetheart, sleep will vanish sorrow.\u201d Neither of us could remember the rest, but by then he\u2019d fallen asleep.<\/p>\n

The next night another role reversal occurred, when while spooning with him, I momentarily shifted my body. \u201cStay with me,\u201d he insisted. We had a chat about breakfast. He wanted pancakes again, and for the first time, I told him my order. \u201cI want one egg scrambled, three slices of bacon and one slice of Levi\u2019s toast.\u201d Through a garbled, fluid filled voice, he laughed hard. That was our last conversation.<\/p>\n

My father lingered another miraculous fifteen days. I was with him when on his own, he took his final breath. The four oxygen tanks we\u2019d stockpiled would benefit someone else. His last aide Dee, was there with us too, and after he passed, she said, \u201cYour father really loved you, because in his dreams, he was always calling your name.\u201d I said, \u201cDee, it wasn\u2019t me he wanted, it was my food.\u201d\u00a0 She was polite when she disagreed, \u201cNo Laura. I think what he wanted was you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cTake me off!\u201d Dad directed all his anger at Mi Sun, an Asian nurse who barely spoke English. But now she understood him perfectly. For Rage is a universal language. Frantic, she phoned my sister and managed to communicate that despite my father\u2019s protests, she didn\u2019t have the authority to halt a patient\u2019s treatment in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":245,"featured_media":10833,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[1587,5369,5370],"class_list":["post-10828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-chef-death","tag-laura-spaeth","tag-laura-spaeth-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/245"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}