I was updating my ‘about me’ page and I added a line that simply said,
” … and my grief has stolen all my words”
I have been looking at the sky.
I have been working.
I am still crying.
My grief has stolen all my words
It has been 42 days.
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I went to visit my very good friend yesterday, Tanni lives about two hours drive away from here so it is always a bit of an effort to get together.
We got the tears out of the way first off and Tanni was as sad as I, when I told her that Amy thought that Mum hadn’t died. Even now the thought of Amy’s excited hope makes me cry.
Tanni had cooked me comfort food for lunch. Osso Buco with Milanese Risotto. When I got home late last night I found the very same recipe in Mum’s Italian cookbook.
So here is the slightly altered recipe. I use beef shins instead of veal. But really you could use any red meat that you liked, cheapo stewing steak would do nicely.
Osso Buco (ala Tanni and Kimmy)
4 veal shanks or knuckles approx 750g each (1 and 1/2 lbs) *
90g (3 oz) butter
2 carrots
3 sticks celery
2 large onions
2 cloves garlic **
flour,salt,pepper
2 tablespoons oil
2 cans of whole tomatoes
1/2 cup of red wine
500g (2 cups) of beef stock
1 tsp basil
1tsp thyme
1 bay leaf
2.5 cm (1 in.) strip of lemon rind***
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind (zest)
3 tablespoons chopped parsley****
Heat 30g (1,oz) of the butter in pan, Add peeled and chopped carrots, onions, celery and one crushed garlic clove. Cook gently until onions are golden brown. Remove from heat and transfer to a large oven-proof dish.
Coat the veal shanks (or whatever meat you are using) in flour seasoned with salt and pepper. Heat remaining butter and oil in large frying pan, add shanks, brown well on all sides. Place the shanks on top of the vegetables in the oven-proof dish.
Push tomatoes, with their juice through a sieve***** Drain away all the fat from the pan the veal was cooked in. Add the wine, beef stock, tomatoes, basil, thyme,bayleaf and strip of lemon rind. Bring sauce to the boil and season with salt and pepper.
Pour the sauce over the veal shanks. Cover the casserole and bake in a moderate oven for 1 and 1/2 hours or until the veal is very tender, stirring occassionally. Just before serving sprinkle the remaining crushed garlic, parsley and lemon zest over the Osso Buco. Serves 6.
The name means hollow bones and the traditional accompaniment is Risotto Milanese.
This is the traditional recipe for Osso Buco. I generally always adapt a recipe once I have cooked it. Years ago I used to live with a Hungarian girl and so I would add 3 or 4 heaped tablespoons of Sweet Hungarian paprika to the sauce as well as oomph up the ingredients a bit.
* Veal is almost impossible to find down here in Tassie and David won’t eat it anyway after he watched that episode of South Park. So I would use beef shin which has been cut into round sections. Failing that I would use whatever red meat I had in the freezer.
** I would easily use half a dozen cloves of garlic, (maybe more)
*** Tanni uses a whole lemon peel, cut into strips
**** I would use a good big handful of flat leaf parsley
***** Sieving takes too long and just makes more washing up. I would just mash the tomatoes up a bit with a fork.
Risotto Milanese
375g (12oz) long grain rice
60g (2 oz) butter
I large onion
1/2 cup dry white wine
3 cups hot water
2 chicken stock cubes
1/4 teaspoon saffron
30g (1oz) butter, extra
2 tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese
salt, pepper.
Heat the butter in pan, add peeled and chopped onion. cook until onion is tender, stirring gently.
Add rice to pan, stir until it is well coated with the butter.
Add wine and one cup of the hot water add saffron and the crumbled stock cubes. Stir well and bring to the boil. When the water has almost evaporated add another 1 cup of the hot water. Stir well again. Bring to the boil again. When this water has almost evaporated,stir in the remaining water. Reduce heat. Cook until the water has been absorbed.
Cooking time is about twenty minutes from the time the first cup of hot water is added. Cook the rice uncovered in this time.
Stir in the extra butter, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper, stir gently until the butter is melted.
These two just worked perfectly together.The richness of the sauce and the zing of the lemon combined with the creaminess of the risotto was just pure comfort food.
Thankyou Tan xox…
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I was driving home from the studio yesterday, listening to a programme on the radio that Mum liked. (Hamish and Andy you are total idiots btw) I was thinking about Mum and I was mentally congratulating myself on the fact that I was able to think about Mum without crying.
I hadn’t been home for long when Veronica rang and told me about Amy’s joyful hope that her Nanny was not died. I have lifted the following text in italics, straight from Veronica’s post, Heartbroken
As we pulled into the driveway and parked, Amy looked at me happily.
‘YAY! YAY! MyNanny is not died! We go visit!’
I looked at her, with tears in my eyes.
‘I’m sorry sweetheart. MyNanny did die. We’re all still very sad.’
‘Oh.’ She said and went quiet.
When Veronica told me about her conversation with Amy I started to cry. I cried when I thought about Amy’s hopeful little face shining with excitement at being able to see her ‘Mynanny’ again. I am crying now as I write this and the need to hug my grand daughter is very strong.
I am also spending way too much time analyzing my grief, I tend to over think things sometimes. The tears aren’t as intense as the first week after the funeral and I am certainly not as vulnerable as I was then. Things that were said or done, that hurt me in those first weeks certainly don’t have the same power now. There is a fine line between sorrow and anger. I am also not afraid that I will start to cry when Mum’s friends ask me how I am, which is a relief because that was annoying, as well as slightly embarrassing.
I thought that I was travelling along nicely,that I had put the worst of the tears behind me. Obviously not. There isn’t a time-frame for grieving, nor is there any set way to grieve. I want to be able to write about my work but the words just aren’t there. My camera is getting dusty and my clay is going hard.
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It is now much later in the morning and I am not feeling quite so sad.
Veronica and I are going down to Mum’s later on today to pack up some more of Mum’s things. It is an incredibly sad task, packing someones life into cardboard boxes. It is also a job that I find I am quite unable to do by myself. I just keep on wandering aimlessly around Mum’s house picking up her things and putting them down again.
Small things make me sad. The library book that Mum was reading that I keep on forgetting to return. A book of sudoko puzzles that I gave Mum when she was having chemo. Mum’s gardening shoes just inside the front door.
On a lighter note it is a sunny winters day up here today, the sky is a clear cloudless blue and there is some warmth in the sunshine.
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When Mum had to be admitted to hospital, eleven days before she died, there were a lot of friends and family wanting information and my phone ran hot. So I decided to give anyone that wanted it my blog address. I was then able to write one or two blog-posts telling how Mum was going. I also avoided the stress of the phone ringing off the hook.
Previously my blog had been a semi private affair, well as private as anything on the internet can be. Now it seems that every man and his dog has my blog address and I feel that some sort of explanation of how I use my blog is required.
When I first moved up here, to the block of land my Mother gave me, I struggled with the isolation. I didn’t know how to drive and I found myself spending days alone with my toddler Veronica, whilst Jeff was off pretending that he was still a single man. We were both in our early twenties and we still had a lot of growing up to do.
I kept a diary. I wrote long letters to friends and I found a kindred spirit in my Mother in Law, who was a passionate letter writer as well. The simple act of writing eased my loneliness and in my MIL, I found a ready ear for all my dreams and aspirations for the future. Sadly Deanna passed away when Vonnie was small and writing this has reminded me to ask Jeff’s Dad if he still has those old letters.
I also found that once I had written out my pain or anger or frustrations into my diary they didn’t trouble me any more and I was able to get on with the business of raising my family and building our home.
My blog is a lot like those early diaries. Here I can dream about the future as well as write out my anguish.
Mum understood what my blog meant and she understood how I used it to get all the words out of my head.
I am an artist and I read a quote somewhere that I have mangled but the gist of it is, “when the pain of not working is greater than the pain of working“ That is how I feel about my ceramic work. The simple act of making Boganvillainy was enough. The making of the work was the important part, the fact that I actually exhibited the work was secondary.
The work needed to be made and sometimes when the work demands to be made I end up going places that are quite unexpected.
The words are the same. I need to get them out of my head. This blog is the place where I dump all my excess words, not quite the literary equivalent of a toilet but the act is very similar, cleansing and cathartic.
At this moment in time I am grieving my Mother and my brain is still not working. I am struggling to stay afloat in a sea of tears and I do feel as though I am drowning in sorrow.
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This time last week I was waiting for the teenagers to arrive and fill my house with noise and music, laughter and muddy footprints.
I survived the sleep-over, though none of the teens actually slept. They stayed up all night watching DVDs and shooting aliens.
I fed the teenagers into submission. They groaned and rolled their eyeballs, they pleaded with me to stop but I didn’t listen. I just kept on taking food into the ‘party zone’. My weapons of mass distension were simple but effective. Pizza and hot chips, combined with timtams, twisties and lollies. Washed down with a gazillion cans of coke and lemonade. I had icecream and marshmallows in reserve if I needed reinforcements but it seems that the final packet of tim tams was enough. Throw an XBox and an eightball table into the mix and a good time was had by all.
Last week I was running on nervous energy. There were a zillion things to be done and very little time to do them in. My phone ran hot, my inbox was full and I was in a state of perpetual motion.
Yesterday was the first time that I didn’t have to drive anywhere or do anything.
So I stayed home and cried.
I cried for my brother who has taken all Mum’s photos. I hope they ease his pain.
I cried for my children who have lost their Grandmother.
I cried for Amy who knows something is wrong but she doesn’t know what.
I cried for myself.
I am going to build a garden for Mum. Thinking about Mum’s garden makes me smile. Mum wanted her ashes buried up here and we talked about her garden a lot.Planning Mum’s garden together gave us something practical to think about so that both of us didn’t drown in our sorrow.
I will listen for your voice on the breeze. I will look for your face in the stars. I will see you dancing with the clouds and I will hold you in my heart.
I love you Mum.
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