In Their Own Words: "Passing" by Uncle J

Genealogists crave first person accounts of what their ancestors said and did. Rarely, do we get this type of detailed insight into our ancestors' lives; a glimpse of who they were other than the standard birth, marriage, and death dates.

After discovering a few documents written by our ancestors, Auntie C and I came up with the idea for a new series of posts called "In Their Own Words." These posts will include letters, poems, and stories written by the dead as well as the living. Please contact either of us if you would like to contribute.

This inaugural story was written by Uncle J.

Passing

She's dead. That should be the end of the story right there. Its a contract we all sign at birth, a duty to be fulfilled. But no one dies until the memory slips from our collective conscience. Bits and pieces remain. Adopted quotes, mannerisms and rituals. Genetic tags are left showing in the smiles, hair and gait of those left to endure. Then there are scraps of personal possessions scattered to decay in their own sweet time.

I pick up the red covered notebook of recipes and thumb through them. Most are written in Janet's own hand, others cut from magazines or the backs of packages of grain and flour. For over 30 years I experienced these pages in my mouth or watched them spring from her hands. Now I can only digest them visually or recall the running commentary in her voice.

Recognizing a 3X5 card, with my mother's impatience all over it, titled, Gramma Love's Walnut-Date Cake, I pause. Condensed into 15 square inches, I find this great effort by three generations of unrelated women to remember. They conspire to the notion that this is the way you hook a Love.

Janet read the recipe silently, placing herself in rural southern Missouri, during the Great Depression. "These would have been Black Walnuts," She declares, "English Walnuts wouldn't be affordable if they were available at all."

She reads on, "the order you mix the ingredients isn't how they teach now. I bet your sister didn't follow the directions this way…she said it wasn't all that great. You have to follow the directions exactly the way it says." Then Janet looks over her glasses, "I think the soda reacts with the dates, otherwise there's not enough leavening here."

I can envision Gramma Love serving this cake up on a visit back home and my father commenting on how good her cooking was. My mother, thinking mechanically, that taste is about what you physically put into something, asked for the recipe. Gramma dutifully passed the recipe on but I'm sure she was wise to the art and realities of baking. In 18 years, I never recall my mother making this cake, Black Walnuts or no. Along enters Janet, a daughter of the south and keeper of memories. She instinctively understood how this recipe would make the perfect cake of necessity. Something her own ancestors would grow up on.

My mother is losing the memory of those days, so for her, Gramma Love has died indeed. Janet has passed too, yet lives for both of them in the creation of this tradition. As I passed the recipe off to my niece, April, the memory comes full circle, back to Loves. I have been left to make it myself several times over the past 3 years. Thanksgiving was our favorite occasion for this celebration of our ancestors. A seder of traditional foods honoring our connection in spite of time and demise.

I am hearing it now, "follow the instructions as they're written, don't mix it too much, pour the boiling water over the soda and chopped dates." I proceed, "oven set at 350, bake for 45 to 50 minutes or until a broom straw can be stuck in and come out clean." And if it wasn't for one of the last things I would ever hear in her voice, to "bring the black walnuts," I guess I could let Janet die too.

 Note: bake in an 8 or 9" square pan.