That Place I Used To Live
After my husband’s death, grief blinded me, perhaps, mercifully, so that I could not see how it would strip from me even the simplest of pleasures. In the spring, when once I had wandered the forest still wet with rain, and greedily plucked wild chanterelles, I found myself walking past them, leaving them to the earth instead. At the farmers market in June, I turned from the first ripe peaches of summer, willing away their sweet floral perfume. In the fall, when the vineyards turned a patchwork of vivid magenta and faded ochre, and roadside stands sold freshly picked apples and pressed cider, I drove past them, averting my eyes. Only once or twice did I allow myself a backward glance. And when winter finally came, I could not bring myself to light the oven and roast a chicken or put a pot of beans on the stove. Food had been our love language. But it had been more—it had been my husband who taught me how to eat.
How often he had said to me, “Food is all about a time and a place.” His words a reminder to slow down and savor each bite. A tomato; a grape; a melon from the vine—each required a moment to reflect. “Where did it grow?” he would ask. If it was by the sea, he would point out its nuanced saltiness. If it had grown in a field among the wild thyme and fennel, he would take me there, until I could taste the earthiness, the softest notes of anise. I learned to see beyond my plate, each meal a microcosm of an endless landscape. With each morsel, I wanted more.
Our life together was marked by meals. Some were fancy and over-the-top, but it was the simple ones that we enjoyed the most. Seasonal fare told a story, revealed the secrets of its origin. The two of us were sleuths, unraveling the clues as we tasted. We studied each bite, silently reflected, and then rushed to share our insights. Had it rained? Were there eucalyptus trees nearby? Do I taste a resinous bouquet? It was an ongoing conversation, one I never tired of. And how I loved it even more when my husband said, “Taste it again; take another bite.”
We ate with an urgency, which, at first, I did not understand. Then one summer while hiking, we stumbled upon a clearing where wild blackberries grew. Branches drooped, heavy with fruit. We examined them and laughed at their size—each berry as big as a thumb. I picked one and popped it into my mouth. It was still warm with the sun and burst upon my tongue with a sweetness I had never known. That day, I ate blackberries, one by one, and when I could not eat another, I hungrily licked at my inky fingertips. I wanted to pick more and bring them home, but my husband said they were too ripe to make the trip. A week later, when we returned, the branches were stripped clean; the blackberries gone. “Their season is short,” my husband had said and then reminded me of the garlicky ramp and peppery arugula, their perfection fleeting, before they turned to seed.
How was it, I wonder now, that I had awakened each morning thinking we had unlimited time, even as each passing season reminded me otherwise?
It was a cruel twist that in his absence, his memory permeated everything, existed everywhere. If I left the house, upon returning, I could feel him there: in the chair where he read, sitting at his place at the dining table, standing at the stove. It was this last that cleaved me in two. This memory of him was so compelling that if I closed my eyes, I could see him there, stirring a pot of his signature lamb Bolognese, so fragrant in the air; or pulling dough through the pasta machine; or at work on his famous cassoulet. This last, a memory so potent that I can still taste its rich broth and garlicky crumb. Without my husband, food was only memory.
The kitchen was where I felt the greatest agony; my grief a vast and endless darkness, and my sorrow so deep that it seemed unfathomable. The place I had loved the most, now tormented me. This was where we had cooked in tandem, moving effortlessly together in a well-orchestrated dance; where one of us minced garlic, while the other stripped the herbs. This was where we chatted and tasted from spoons. A place once so alive was now an empty room.
The thought of any particular dish would send me into despair. Each ingredient laced with the memory of a life once lived, that memory so bittersweet. The stove stood cold and gathered dust; the knives were still in their wooden block, even the salt in its cellar was left untouched. I couldn’t bear making anything more than the slices of toast that I ate while standing at the sink where I could look from the window out onto the garden below.
The garden was where I found peace. The quiet of the day and the cool loam of the earth comforted me. The English roses kept me company as they tumbled over the wall, their pale peach and cream petals briefly opening each morning, their powdery perfume soft in the air. Nature eased that empty ache and let me recall, without sadness, the many times my husband and I sat in the garden and feasted on our bounty: narrow spears of asparagus gently poached, Globe artichokes steamed a vivid shade of green, white nectarines, plump and juicy.
It was in the garden, on a California winter’s day, that I first spotted the tomato. It was half hidden beneath a row of rosemary where it must have rolled months earlier when I tore out the summer vegetables to make way for the winter greens. I left it untouched, but for weeks after I saw it, looking at it became part of my morning ritual. I was drawn to its ruby blush—a vibrant jewel—the way it laid upon the ground, a contrast to the green of the rosemary.
One morning after I finished my toast, I brushed the crumbs from my hands and went into the garden. I don’t remember what prompted me, but on that day, I had every intention of picking up that tomato—perhaps even of tossing it into the compost bin—but when I reached out, my hand brushed against the rosemary and set loose her heady fragrance.
I paused and took the scent in, steadied myself against the rush of camphor, and for the first time in a long time, the world seemed alive and I along with it. I saw how the sun lit up the stalks of rosemary with their silvery leaves and purple flowers and there, among them, I heard the buzzing bees. In the beds, I could see the first tender shoots of the crocus as they tested the air. Overhead, I heard a hawk calling out and looked up to see it as it circled, the redwood branches cast in silhouette.
I stood there and watched the hawk, saw him circle there. I held the tomato in the palm of my hand, felt its still firm flesh and imagined its faint floral taste, and then, I turned my face into the sunlight, and I closed my eyes.
Melanie Bryant is writer and memoirist. Her work was a finalist for the 2021 Annie Dillard Nonfiction Contest and the 2022 VanderMey Nonfiction Prize. Her essay, “An Alphabetical Catalog of Love, Loss, and What We Ate,” was published in the December 2022 issue of Ruminate Magazine; she has work forthcoming in River Teeth’s Beautiful Things. She holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans and currently lives in the Pacific Northwest where she is at work on a collection of narratives exploring grief and identity.
