By The second week of January, and the late stage has begun its particular work — not the dramatic decline that movies depict but the gradual, daily, incremental reduction of a woman to her essential elements. Mama no longer speaks. Not "rarely speaks" — does not speak. The words are gone. All of them. The hymns remain — fragments, notes, the music that lives below the words — but the words themselves have departed, leaving a silence that is both empty and full, empty of language and full of something I cannot name but that I feel when I sit beside her and hold her hand and the hand squeezes back, and the squeezing is the sentence, and the sentence says: I am here.
The squeezing is Mama's last language. The hand that stirred the roux and kneaded the biscuits and seasoned the soup and held the cast-iron skillet and held my hand when I was small now squeezes when I hold it, and the squeezing is all the verbs reduced to one — all the stirring and kneading and seasoning and holding reduced to squeezing, the last physical expression of a woman whose body remembers what her mind has forgotten.
I told James. I told Carrie. The telling was the hardest phone calls I have made — harder than the affair discovery call to my sister, harder than any call in my life. I said, "Mama is in the late stage. The words are gone. But she squeezes my hand." James was silent for a long time. Then he said, "I'm coming home this weekend." Carrie was silent for a different kind of long time — the long time that includes the distance between Fukuoka and Charleston and the understanding that the distance may not be crossable in time. She said, "I love you, Mom." And the sentence was the squeeze, delivered across an ocean.
I made chicken and rice — the simplest dish, the first dish, the dish that requires nothing from the cook except the ingredients and the patience and the faith that the rice will absorb the broth and the broth will become the rice and the becoming is the cooking and the cooking is the life.
When James said he was coming home, I needed something on the stove — something that did not require me to think, something that would fill the house with a smell that meant we are still here, we are still a family, come inside. The chicken and rice I’d made in those raw first days was for me alone; this was for him, for the coming home, for the particular comfort of a meal that simmers low and asks nothing of you while it works. Ham barbecue was what Mama used to make when the family gathered, slow and sweet and enough for everyone, and making it now felt like borrowing her hands for an afternoon.
Ham Barbecue
Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 30 minutes | Total Time: 40 minutes | Servings: 6
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 lbs cooked ham, finely chopped or ground
- 1 cup ketchup
- 1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
- 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
- 1 tablespoon yellow mustard
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 6 sandwich rolls or hamburger buns, for serving
Instructions
- Combine the sauce. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, stir together the ketchup, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, onion powder, and black pepper until the sugar dissolves and the mixture is smooth, about 2 minutes.
- Add the ham. Stir in the chopped ham, making sure every piece is coated in the sauce. Reduce the heat to low.
- Simmer low and slow. Cover and cook on low heat for 25–30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the sauce has thickened and the ham is tender and fully warmed through. The mixture should be saucy but not soupy.
- Taste and adjust. Before serving, taste the filling and adjust seasoning — a little more vinegar for tang, a little more brown sugar for sweetness, depending on your ham and your mood.
- Serve. Spoon generously onto toasted rolls and serve warm. A side of coleslaw or pickles is always welcome.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 340 | Protein: 22g | Fat: 8g | Carbs: 42g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 1180mg