Food For Thought: Eating Our Grief

Food, death, and royalty

This past week the world suffered a profound loss.

While Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was not queen of the entire world the entire world certainly took note of her passing. I was reminded of the words of Winston Churchill on the death of the Queen’s father, King George VI, in 1952:

When the death of the King was announced to us yesterday morning there struck a deep and solemn note in our lives which, as it resounded far and wide, stilled the clatter and traffic of twentieth-century life in many lands, and made countless millions of human beings pause and look around them.

It’s a sentiment that many millions around the world are sharing. A constancy and thread of our lives is gone. I’m a Canadian, and the Queen was our head of state for more than 70 years. Few people alive have much memory of a world without her and her presence is everywhere. The feeling is best described as a loss more than grief, or at least not grief in the sense of which most of us are familiar. It’s a change in the background, a refocusing of the big picture.

Much has been made that, despite the late Queen’s remarkable devotion to the duties of royal life, she was, in some ways at least, an ordinary person. Her love of dogs is endearing and familiar to many, but I rather enjoy the anecdotes about the ordinary meals at the palaces: the cornflakes stored in Tupperware, the bits of toast shared with the corgis under the table, and Her Majesty stacking plates and washing dishes at Balmoral.

It got me thinking about the role of food in death and in our grieving rituals.

Food is, because of its necessity for life, a big part of our experience of death. Death, both plant and animal, is required for us to eat and thus live. Different people choose to square that circle in different ways, sometimes by adopting vegetarian or vegan lifestyles, by advocating for certain ethical farming and slaughter practices, and most often assuming a certain cognitive dissonance - most simply, we try not to think about it too hard. But regardless, we can only eat by causing death.

But what about when we die?

From time immemorial, humans have believed in an afterlife. The exact form of the hoped-for afterlife varies, but in many cases it involves a journey. Whether the journey is to the heavens, across the river Styx, or elsewhere, mourning rituals frequently involve food for the dead. King Tutankhamun was buried with more than a hundred baskets of food, Buddhists remind the dead that they are loved with food offerings, and folks in my own family have been buried with a favourite bottle of whiskey. Perhaps it’s because we can’t conceive of life without eating (and drinking) that we often send the dead with “something for the road” because no one knows what time dinner is served in the afterlife.

But, it is often said, that funerals are for the living. And while food and eating may be involved in the ritual itself (and discussion of communion is for another day) the meals and observances in the days surrounding a death share many similarities regardless of culture and serve both symbolic and practical considerations.

Symbols abound in funeral foods. In Jewish culture eggs represent the circle of life. In China eating chicken is symbolic of the soul flying to heaven and sweets purify those who have come in contact with the dead. Rice is symbol of life in Asia, much as wheat is in Europe, and both figure prominently in meals served to mourners. In some European cultures “sin-eaters” would symbolically consume the sins of the deceased to smooth the way to the afterlife. Arval cakes and funeral bread helped assure mourners that the deceased was not a victim of foul play, particularly by their heirs.

But food has a much more practical purpose in times of loss. Grief causes many people to lose their appetite - the stress, disruption, and sadness overwhelming even the most basic of human needs. Eating can be a painful reminder that we are alive and the deceased is not, and an empty seat at the table can seem like an open wound. Mourning foods are recipes that bring comfort, or entice the grief-weary into “just a few bites”. Soups and casseroles can be frozen or reheated as needed for crowds or small groups, sandwiches re-arranged on smaller and smaller trays until none are left, and sweets nibbled for a needed dose of dopamine. When the appetite returns it can be voracious, making up for the loss to both body and soul. There is very little anyone can do for the bereaved but to help them go on living - you can’t make them feel better, but you can bring food, satisfying the desire to “do something” when there is rarely much to do.

And the specific foods we choose for our mourning meals are often every bit as individual as the deceased. Many people feel a pull towards dishes that remind them of their childhood or of cultural traditions sometimes forgotten. Nostalgia and reminiscence are a huge part of the grieving process and can bring mourners together with a shared sense of “we”, a solidarity with both the bereaved and the deceased. In Thai culture there is a wonderful tradition of funeral books, a gift given to mourners to help remember the deceased. These books often include favourite recipes, an beautiful acknowledgement of the central importance of food in a person’s life and a tangible legacy of their time on this earth.

Food is central whether we are royal or common, and our tastes can speak more to who we really are than any title, royal or otherwise. This thought reminded me about the story of the the Queen’s chocolate biscuit cake. It’s a simple cake, really. Crumbled cookies held together by chocolate ganache. A former royal chef recalled that she would eat it down to the last slice, the cake tin travelling with her until the last piece was gone. A simple cake, eaten to the last crumb. How very ordinary, and how wonderfully so.

So I made a chocolate biscuit cake this past weekend. There are many recipes, but nearly any of them will do. I used this one. We’re eating it one slice at at time, and down to the last crumb. We’ll finish it while we stop and look around this week, contemplating the bigger picture of constancy, duty, and a long life that was very well lived.

Rest in Peace Your Majesty. God Save the King.