What did you eat today? Anything healthy and nutritious? Something that was neither of those, but was decadent and sumptuous? With no consequences or concern for tomorrow what would you chose as your one perfect meal? Perhaps the image of that meal just came to your mind this instant, or maybe it changed again after a moment’s consideration? Memories of past meals in a certain place, or time, with a person or people that are special to you. A memory might sway your decision, even if it wasn’t your favorite choice.
With more time to reflect the more choices there are, and the more your memories come the greater the opportunities to realize what something really means to you. Associations, events, and the myriad of other connections that lead to yet more and more of what made up your life.
For some, myself included, the contemplation of an ideal meal is more than just idle speculation. It is a potential eventuality that has a much higher and more real possibility of happening than any other situation I can think of. A Last Meal, because you know there will never be another.
Sadly, it couldn’t be something homemade by a mother, grandmother, daughter or wife. I would try to find something as close to a homecooked meal as I could, and hope it would taste in as close of an approximation as possible. This so when I shut my eyes, I see that beautiful treasured memory. That time, and place, and the people you loved and were loved by.
My daughter doesn’t remember me cooking for her, or feeding her from my plate, because she somehow thought it better than her own, but I do.
Maybe my Last Meal would be what she last had when we shared that moment. Perhaps my mother’s chicken and dumplings, my Mawmaw’s peach cobbler, or my aunt’s persimmon puddin; with all the other stuff of course. Pintos, pan-fried cornbread; I could go on and on.
The whole concept of a Last Meal takes on a much more profound meaning when you actually have to contemplate it. So too when you actually desire it …