Thirteen Cakes

and a sweet Sunday meditation

Ever since my mother died I’ve been slowly dreaming a project into existence. I’ve written and talked elsewhere about the surprise and wonderment I felt, that even in the midst of a suffocating and inky grief, I had an urge to design her a cake in the days following her death. Why would that be the thing that came up? I didn’t question too much. I just started designing.

For my mom’s death cake I was thinking about nests, home, the solace of nature and beautiful kitchen things, things that connected me to her and to a  long line of caring women. I used birch bark, pussy willow, hydrangea, calendula, yellow cornmeal, hibiscus, wild rice, and handmade rice paper in its design. I wrote about her death, funeral cakes, the repast and Black loss for the inaugural edition of For The Culture Magazine.

Of course food generally plays a central role in death and bereavement rituals, but there is something about the ephemerality of cake that works beautifully for the contemplation of questions of mortality. Every grief cake I’ve made—the designing and making of the cakes and then writing about them—has been a working through of my own grief. A way of understanding it. A reconciling. I was forging important connections between death, food, grief, and ritual. At least for myself. I was thinking about the gendered affect with which grief can present and all of the ways death grief can swirl and intermingle with other modes of grief that women* might experience. Loss grief. Absence grief. What could have been and what’s not yet grief. I was thinking of the kitchen as historical and ongoing site for the holding, working through and healing of these griefs—particularly for black women.  All connections that I want to explore more deeply and intentionally.

So, two years later, I have a title: Thirteen Cakes, and a concept.

To the extent that the relationship between Blackness and death is already overdetermined, this project would seek to open up ways for us to reconsider and reimagine black death by highlighting the spaces and practices of care and ritual that support us in our grief, in part, by celebrating the sweetness and beauty of our extra/ordinary lives.

Thirteen, though. This is the “unlucky” number of the misunderstood death card. Food and death are linked—the repast, bereavement rituals, memorialization practices. Thirteen Cakes, intentionally sets an honored place at the table for this awesome guest, that they might more fully be a part of the conversation. So. I’ll design a death or a grief cake, I’ll write, or maybe ask a talented friend to write, an attendant essay or poem that extends or expands the symbolism and meaning of each cake, and I’ll create guided meditations meant to support and hold us as we each navigate the unique entanglement of griefs and joys that describes our Aliveness. I have other ideas that may grow with/into this project (the Project is process), but that’s the gist.

The ideas are constellating and I’m hoping to present the first cake yet this month. Right now though, I’m tired. A bit ragged. These last couple of months I’ve been going and going. And the months before those held challenges too. This is called living, I know. I’m grateful to be pulling and pushing oxygen. But I need a moment of stillness and care and a reminder to be sweet to myself right now. I’m guessing you do too. So, here’s a meditation to include in your Sunday evening ritual if you so desire. All you need is a piece of nice chocolate, a quiet spot, and about eleven minutes. Chocolate Meditation. **

*In this newsletter, “woman” and related terms always point to the self-identified, self-determined, and self-experienced.

**This one is hosted on my former business’s website but all future meditations will be posted to a soon-to-be-forthcoming new site (monicaoconnell.com)!