using my own creation to process grief

a case study of Baking by Feel

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We unexpectedly lost my step dad Lance a few weeks ago. He was incredibly kind, funny, and caring. He was an excellent partner to my mom, and they really loved and enjoyed each other. He loved cooking/baking and his twice baked potatoes are the world’s best. He was so excited to be a grandparent.

from our wedding celebration, 2022

The concept of dads has always been messy for me. I lost my biological dad before I could remember. And it’s a strange and confusing and lonely abstraction to lose the possibility of something you never actually experienced. People told me what I was missing, but I experienced it more as an absence than a loss. I watched my friends interact with their dads with curiosity tinged with jealousy. I categorized it as something I just wouldn’t experience.

But many years later, Lance joined the family. I was in college. And it came with a certain amount of skepticism about the authenticity of gaining a parent after I was already an adult. There’s not really a road map for that kind of thing (or if there is, I never found it). With a deep rooted belief in the fragility of things, it was sometimes difficult for me to accept his consistent, freely given support and affection. It was scary for me to trust it. It took time and a conscious effort to restructure. But I’m so proud I was able to eventually put my full weight on it. Because this time, I have a relationship to grieve.

I’m grateful for Lance’s loud enthusiasm for absolutely anything I was excited about. I feel lucky to have taste tested pastries with someone who loves that kind of thing as much as I do. The relationship taught me that you can love any way you want, regardless of convention. And that a lack of blood ties or a shorter length of time can’t discount that. I know that both of our capacities to love and enjoy is infinite. I’m profoundly sad, and profoundly grateful.

On to the processing part. Honestly, I’m not sure I’ve ever truly used my book like it’s meant to be used. I’ve never really been able to get enough distance from it. There was always a critique in the back of my head, or a hyper awareness of what I’d chosen to say. It can be hard to trust your own advice. But I think I finally did, and I want to tell you about it.

Funnily enough, I didn’t even mean to do it - I just had a sudden (I assumed pregnancy related) craving for my chocolate graham cracker cookies. So I opened to the recipe page, and there was the pairing: angry. On the surface level I wasn’t feeling particularly angry at that moment. I was mostly feeling defeated. But I definitely have had a pot of sharp anger simmering threateningly on the back burner since he died. Luckily, my brain directed me to the recipe with the pairing I needed (even though I’d actually forgotten what that pairing was). So I went with it. Here’s what I wrote about anger a couple of years ago:

from Baking by Feel

To enhance the intense vibe, I asked Alexa to put on an early 2000s punk rock playlist (ahem, I actually said alt rock, but Alexa heard punk rock). As someone who often wore studded jewelry and cultivated a punk personality in general, Lance would’ve been proud of this. In the book, I direct myself to slam things, whisk aggressively. And I did a bit of that. But that day my anger felt more inward facing - a jumbled mix of resentment, fear, and loss. So what helped me even more was dropping into my body and just going through the process of making. It felt almost like a choreographed routine that I knew without thinking about it - weighing out the ingredients, creaming the butter with the sugar, rolling the dough into balls.

Obviously baking can’t cure grief. The book is a tool, nothing more. But dialing in to the physicality of the moment allowed me to spend a couple of hours coexisting with the grief that feels like it could consume me if it really tried.

walnuts instead of graham crackers, but you get the idea

There’s a particular brand of awful to losing a parent when you’re preparing to become a parent. I’m devastated at what we’ve all been robbed of. I keep thinking of the Christmas I told him I liked eggnog so we went out and bought 5 different kinds and taste tested them all. And about the 7 pairs of tiny shoes he already picked out for my girl. I will forever miss his contagious laugh. I don’t know what to do with the hopes and expectations I had for a lot of people I love’s futures. But I do know I’m committed to trying my best to carry the ways he made me feel seen and cared for into my own relationship with my own kid. Idk, that’s all I’ve got.

xoxo,

your favorite becca

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