When my children were all living at home I cooked for 7, sometimes more when their friends were here. As the years went by and my children grew up, became independent, and eventually left home my daily cooking was just for two. Due to what fate has decreed I am now cooking for one – and I don’t like it one bit.
The small amount of food in the pans looks pathetic, hardly worth bothering to dirty the utensils for.
Normally I am not the ‘poor me’ sort of person as I find self-pitying a waste of time which will get me nowhere. But sometimes these days I think ‘why bother’. However, I owe it to my family, I owe it to him, and I owe it to me, to keep myself as well as I can and so I do ‘bother’.
I have nearly lost it a few times since he passed away. When I saw a granddad with his little granddaughter at a shopping centre, when I picked up my man’s glasses to put them away, when I watched again the disc of photos shown at his funeral, when I held his driver’s licence and saw his photo there. Sometimes a little thing will bring me to the edge, everything is still very raw but somehow mainly I have been able to hold it together. However, the other evening when preparing a meal for one I did let my emotions get the better of me.
Knowing that every day, all over the world, so many people are going through the same grieving process of having lost a loved one – are now cooking for one, didn’t help me at all, and for once I felt sorry for myself wondering how I was going to cope in the future. I felt sorry for him that he was no longer there. I wondered why one half is left to face the world again when their other half has left it.
Then I suddenly had a vision – no not one of those holier-than-thou sort of visions, but a picture came into my head of something I had seen on the T.V. some time ago. It wasn’t one of those adverts that are produced to melt the heart and undo the purse-strings sort of picture but an actual news report. It was of a woman who though she lived in a different country to me still belonged in the same world. But what a difference her world was to mine.
This woman had walked many miles in search of food and water, a baby attached to a milk-less breast, a baby that might even by then have been past all help, whose life might have expired while still sucking on emptiness. This woman, footsore and weary, probably had never had the ‘luxury’ of feeling sorry for herself. She had had to accept that her life was as it was because there had never been an alternative. It was as it was. She probably never questioned her destiny. A woman who, despite all odds, still persevered at staying alive when so many others would have given up, who had suffered agonies and possibly atrocities like I couldn’t begin to imagine, had probably already buried babies and would most likely have to bury this one, if she hadn’t already done so.
Then I thought of my full food cupboard, my ‘frig and freezer with enough food in them to feed an army, the fact that if I needed more I only had to go to the shopping centre nearby with money in my purse, and only a few steps away from me was a tap with clean running water, all I had to do was turn it on. I thought of my family who are my strength and my support and are always ready to help me. I thought of my friends.
Thinking of all I do have compared to this strong-in-spirit woman, who would never give up or say ‘why me’, alone in her miserable world, I felt ashamed of myself. Of course I am still grieving and right now I feel I always will, of course my emotions are still raw, of course I’m sure there will be times when I think ‘why him, why me’ but as for cooking for one – well that pathetic amount I put in the pan would have been a feast for her, and I will be forever thankful that I really am able to cook for one – I just wish I could share it with her.
The small amount of food in the pans looks pathetic, hardly worth bothering to dirty the utensils for.
Normally I am not the ‘poor me’ sort of person as I find self-pitying a waste of time which will get me nowhere. But sometimes these days I think ‘why bother’. However, I owe it to my family, I owe it to him, and I owe it to me, to keep myself as well as I can and so I do ‘bother’.
I have nearly lost it a few times since he passed away. When I saw a granddad with his little granddaughter at a shopping centre, when I picked up my man’s glasses to put them away, when I watched again the disc of photos shown at his funeral, when I held his driver’s licence and saw his photo there. Sometimes a little thing will bring me to the edge, everything is still very raw but somehow mainly I have been able to hold it together. However, the other evening when preparing a meal for one I did let my emotions get the better of me.
Knowing that every day, all over the world, so many people are going through the same grieving process of having lost a loved one – are now cooking for one, didn’t help me at all, and for once I felt sorry for myself wondering how I was going to cope in the future. I felt sorry for him that he was no longer there. I wondered why one half is left to face the world again when their other half has left it.
Then I suddenly had a vision – no not one of those holier-than-thou sort of visions, but a picture came into my head of something I had seen on the T.V. some time ago. It wasn’t one of those adverts that are produced to melt the heart and undo the purse-strings sort of picture but an actual news report. It was of a woman who though she lived in a different country to me still belonged in the same world. But what a difference her world was to mine.
This woman had walked many miles in search of food and water, a baby attached to a milk-less breast, a baby that might even by then have been past all help, whose life might have expired while still sucking on emptiness. This woman, footsore and weary, probably had never had the ‘luxury’ of feeling sorry for herself. She had had to accept that her life was as it was because there had never been an alternative. It was as it was. She probably never questioned her destiny. A woman who, despite all odds, still persevered at staying alive when so many others would have given up, who had suffered agonies and possibly atrocities like I couldn’t begin to imagine, had probably already buried babies and would most likely have to bury this one, if she hadn’t already done so.
Then I thought of my full food cupboard, my ‘frig and freezer with enough food in them to feed an army, the fact that if I needed more I only had to go to the shopping centre nearby with money in my purse, and only a few steps away from me was a tap with clean running water, all I had to do was turn it on. I thought of my family who are my strength and my support and are always ready to help me. I thought of my friends.
Thinking of all I do have compared to this strong-in-spirit woman, who would never give up or say ‘why me’, alone in her miserable world, I felt ashamed of myself. Of course I am still grieving and right now I feel I always will, of course my emotions are still raw, of course I’m sure there will be times when I think ‘why him, why me’ but as for cooking for one – well that pathetic amount I put in the pan would have been a feast for her, and I will be forever thankful that I really am able to cook for one – I just wish I could share it with her.
