Bittersweet 16: The Ambush of Grief

I’m stirring the pot. After boiling seven bushels of gorgeous roma tomatoes, we crushed them into a stainless steel cauldron and now it’s my turn to prevent the sauce from sticking to the bottom while it blends with garlic and dried basil from the garden. Keep it moving. Don’t let it spill over the edge. Stir the pot.

Earlier this summer my eldest nephew, Michael, asked his grandparents to show him how they make tomato sauce. He and his girlfriend want to learn so they can continue the tradition long after nonna and nonno are gone. 

Along with their siblings, his grandparents have been making tomato sauce all of their lives, but death has altered the family landscape. We lost my father-in-law’s two brothers to lung complications, and Michael’s dad returned from a dream vacation cruise on the Amalfi Coast to a diagnosis of advanced stomach cancer. At 52, he passed away shockingly fast. Two horrific months and my brother-in-law was gone, leaving his wife and three sons behind.

So making the sauce would be different this year with aunts, cousins, uncles, parents and grandparents all lending a hand. Everyone was invited to participate, but scheduling conflicts forced us to settle on the weekend after my son, Aurès, had already left for school.

My wife gave Michael a bit of a hard time when he and his girlfriend arrived well after the agreed upon 6 a.m. start. He quickly explained that his grandmother had told him they could show up later, if they wanted. (Nonna stirring the pot.) Not long after he sat down, Michael let me know that the Tim Horton’s Roll Up The Rim t-shirt I had on kind of sickened him. I’d forgotten that his first job was at Tim’s, which is where my son worked up until last month, squirrelling away money for school. I told Michael that I wore his cousin’s old Tim’s shirt because it was red and, more importantly, as a way of bringing Aurès to the gathering even though he wasn’t around anymore.

Earlier in the week, on the day Aurès started classes at Carleton University, I cried when it hit me that his birth mom died exactly sixteen years before. Doctors found a tumor in Leila’s lung that had already spread to her brain when he was only nine months old. Stooped over my desk, I felt numb. Loss can blindside us no matter how much time has gone. Wiping my face, I trudged upstairs to his empty room and took a couple of snapshots of his wall: Leila’s 1990 Cal Arts ID, the plaque and heart-shaped rock at her gravestone. I emailed the pictures and told him what I’m sure he already knows: how proud of him she would be. We all are.

Soon our sauce will be labelled 2016, the jars neatly arranged on shelves in nonna’s cantina. Maybe Aurès will be around for the tomato experience next year, who knows? Who can say who will be here when the first jar gets opened. Who knows who will be with us when the last one is gone.

--DT