Buttermilk Pound Cake and Why It’s Part of My Grieving Process

I was 19 when my mom suddenly passed away. One day she didn’t feel well and a week or so later she was gone. I was in the middle of finals in the spring semester of my sophomore year of college. No one wanted to “worry” me so I got the filtered version of events as it was all happening. And then I was too shocked to ask questions.

The point is, she left and the grief came.

Her wake was on her birthday. And a couple of weeks later I was nearly inconsolable on Mother’s Day. April and May are kind of…not my favorite months.

I don’t know if everyone experiences this but after she died I began to look at all my life events in terms of Before Death and After Death—High school graduation was Before She Died, college graduation was After She Died.

And then there’s the Grief Math that you start to do as time passes. When I turned 29 she’d been gone for more than 1/3 of my life. When I turn 38 I will have lived longer without her than with her. If I turn 57 I will have lived longer than she did.

It is exhausting and unstoppable, thinking about life in these weirdly specific, morbid terms.

And like clockwork, for the past 14 years, as soon as April rolls around my world revolves around that particular date. Sometimes it’s quiet—a melancholy feeling I just can’t shake. Other times it’s loud—being unable to do anything except replay the last week of her life over and over and crying until I can’t breathe.

Two years ago was the first time I had a therapist to help me navigate this month as an adult. We made a plan to accept my emotions and work with them, or at the very least around them. Instead of letting all of April be one long dreadful countdown towards THE DAY, I made a plan to turn it into a celebration. I bought myself flowers and I wrote her a letter.

Most excitingly I made recipes that reminded me of her and happy times throughout the month. Buttermilk waffles on her ancient waffle iron that is probably older than I am. Taco soup that she made so much growing up that I came to loathe it.

But her buttermilk poundcake in particular that means the absolute world to me. Long before I enjoyed baking or cooking, this was the one recipe I still made with regularity. Any church event or work party or holiday gathering that required a dish meant that I was showing up with this very unassuming cake.

It connects me to her in a way that I can’t articulate. I remember her white Sunbeam mixer and the heavy, wide glass bowl she used each time. I sneak swipes of the raw batter as an adult and remember sitting on the couch with her as a girl and licking the beaters while we waited on the cake to bake. And as I de-mold the warm cake—perfectly, every time—from my still-looks-brand-new NordicWare bundt pan that my husband gifted to me on our first anniversary, I look up at her scratched and battered, definitely-not-new pan on display next to my wedding champagne flutes.

Grief is an animal you can’t tame. But you can make compromises with it. Sometimes at least. I’m allowed to cry and I can eat poundcake while I do it.