Simplicity

Most days I eat alone, all three meals. I like simple foods just as much as the more exotic ones I eat when out with friends or on vacation. Crackers and cheese, broccoli and tomatoes, corn tortillas and black beans, sandwiches, mushroom soup, my little veggie thingies, as my mom calls them. This is what I eat when I eat alone.

I get this from my father. He ate like he lived his life, very unpretentiously. The last meal we ate together was vegetable soup and sandwiches. I had gone over to eat dinner with him on a Tuesday night. I didn't know he was going to die on Sunday and I didn't know this was the last meal we would share together, or the last dinner he would actually eat. (I learned in the days following that when people are preparing to die, they stop eating because their metabolism shuts down in preparation for death.) Perhaps it's better we don't know these things. But if I had known, would we have chosen something different? Something grandiose and complicated?

I'm glad we ate what was normal for us. Because the talking over dinner was always more important than the food. I'm glad our last meal together didn't change that.