Grief is weird. Although I don't know if I would call this feeling grief. Maybe melancholy, or just an ache of feelings I can't name. But what I do know is that it comes and goes. In the waves between the good, and a blaring light in the bad.
Its that feeling when your cooking and measuring out your ingredients. Trying to figure out what your craving. Whats that food that seems to be slipping from your grasp. And then all of a sudden its there, the very thing thats been on the tip of your tongue.
Its not something that you yourself know how to make. But you've sat and watched her make it hundreds of times. The careful chops of the knife as she prepares the chicken. The mixture of flour, eggs, and spices. The beeping of the oven and the sizzling of the oil. The hisses as some of it splashes on your arm, and you wipe it carefully away to make sure she was fine.
But most of all I remember the laughter, the safety, and the peace that came with the meal.
I wasn't the first person to have had this food with her, nor will I be the last. But I never thought that the last time I asked for it. Was the very last time we'd eat it together.
I really miss her own version of sesame chicken.
