Tag Archives: memorials

Eternal Memory

April 2, 2016church, death, food and cooking, griefbeans, carrot cake, koliva, memorials, veganGretchenJoanna

gl P1030780 koliva 3-24-16 With my family and friends I have memorialized my husband in many ways in the last couple of weeks. The evening of the day that we decorated the grave, we had a short memorial service for him at my church. Ivy stood right by me holding her candle straight and steady for the whole fifteen minutes. After we sang and prayed together, we ate koliva together in his honor. “Eternal Memory!”

I’m not going to post a picture here every time I make one of these bowls of ceremonial boiled wheat, but this first anniversary was the Big One for me, so it bears telling about. I wanted to use blue Jordan almonds to decorate, but they were not to be found in the usual candy stores, so I put M&M’s instead, along with white almonds. Maggie helped me with the tricky job of placing candies on a bed of powdered sugar.

On the following weekend the agape meal I had committed to was accomplished. When I mentioned it two weeks ago, in the same post I put a photo of a big pot of soup I’d made, which I think was confusing; that soup had nothing to do with the agape meal that was to come. My menu for the meal that needed to feed about 100 people was: (What I call) Greek Beans, Cottage Fried Potatoes, Cabbage Salad with Tarragon and Toasted Almonds, and vegan Chocolate Carrot Cake. gl P1030804

I used about 15# of cabbage and 50# of potatoes, 20# of Great Northern beans, and about 10# of carrots for the cake. Six dedicated and necessary friends from church helped me both Saturday and Sunday, out of love for me and for my late husband. It was the first time I’d ever organized something like this, and the project filled my mind for many hours over the preceding weeks, as I scribbled my recipes and math problems and gl P1030815 Greek Beans shopping lists on a sheaf of papers I tried to keep all together.

Several things didn’t work exactly as planned – when dealing with large quantities not only the quantities have to be adjusted, but cooking times and methods. Now I know!

Too many finely grated carrots were accidentally put into the cake batter, we couldn’t tell exactly to what degree, so I just gave the four sheet pans longer baking time and we had delectable brownies instead of cake.

In the morning before we started cooking I was jittery, and glad the day was finally here when I could start this last big effort. As I expected, once I got to the church kitchen and my crew began to execute my plans, the whole event was a lot of fun. The food got rave reviews, too! gl P1030833crp And now the big One Year milestone has passed. These various commemorative events and tasks have helped me so much to focus my grief and prayers in a community-oriented and practical way. Can you believe that I had joy as well as grief? I didn’t have a minute to spare for brooding, but at the same time I was not distracted from the anniversary, but rather able to keep it in the most satisfying way — I’m very thankful.

I love a tree — and the earth.

November 6, 2015food and cooking, my garden, nature, treesapples, autumn, koliva, landscaping, memorials, pineapple guava, pomegranates, soilGretchenJoanna

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The most exciting thing that happened this week was the delivery of trees, and the most beautiful one that came was the pineapple guava. I don’t think I have ever seen a more beautif GL P1020536 ul specimen of tree. And so big already, stretching its arms wide, eager to grow on a trellis in the corner of my yard, behind a sitting area.

The trellis will provide support for a generous eight feet in each direction, sideways and up, and the tree will be one part of the design that blocks out things like the neighbors’ big boat across the fence; it will be one of the many plants that help to turn my yard into a sheltered and cozy oasis. GL P1020588

Early in the week workers drove noisy machines into the hard soil and clay to make trenches for irrigation pipes, and for electric wires to the spot where a fountain will play water music.

Landscape Lady brought more plants in the back of her car and we carried them together to the back, succulents and yarrow and salvia; lavender, phlomis and kangaroo paws, some still in bloom or with fruit, like this darling dwarf pomegranate.

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Now when I look out the window I can see so much more than the sea of dirt. In addition to the many pots of colorful plants, huddled in the spot reserved for the play house, I see orange or hot pink paint, drawing out the lines for paths and planting beds, so the edging will go in the right place, after the dirt goes in the right place. Landscape Lady has had to draw these lines several times because the workers tend to smudge them into oblivion.

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Huge trucks have dumped three kinds GL IMG_0866 dirt of dirt/rock into my driveway: base rock to form a good foundation for the gravel utility yard, compost to mix into the unknown stuff that was packed into the pool cavity, and vegetable planting mix to fill the boxes.

This is what it looked like before it all was carted to the proper places. Tomorrow another truck will roar slowly down the street and back into my driveway to dump three times this much, 20 yards of soil ! that Andres and Juan will push in wheelbarrows to the back yard and mound up in the planting areas.

In the front yard my chard and collards and kale are growing; they liked the recent rain. The late sunflowers are pretty still, waving at the people walking by; I let the Waterlogue app paint one for me. I weeded and trimmed salvias and roses and more things out front, and staked the heavy mums again, on one of these gorgeous fall days that make a person fall in love with the e GL P1020602 arth.

This afternoon I made my first-ever solitary trip to the apple farm that has supplied our family for at least 25 autumns now. It’s a little late, so they only had four of their 27 varieties for sale: Arkansas Black, Granny Smith, Pink Lady and Rome Beauty. Even their names are delicious! I brought home Ladies and Beauties, and ate one as soon as I got back in the car.

I stopped to get some supplies for yet another koliva, the ceremonial dish we Orthodox make for memorial services. Tomorrow we will have prayers before Vespers, in memory of a parishioner who helped me learn to bake communion bread many years ago. As she doesn’t have any family in the parish who might want to do it, I offered to make the koliva.

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In this town I can’t get single colors of Jordan almonds, which are very traditional to include, so I sorted out the colors I wanted from an assortment. The bright chocolate-covered sunflower seeds looked appealing, too, so I picked over and separated some of those. I don’t know yet which I will use for decorating the dish of boiled wheat — except for the chocolate pastilles; they will go on top for sure.

Some recipes say that pomegranate seeds are essential, to mix in with the wheat and nuts, etc., but of course they aren’t always in season, and they weren’t when I made my first batches. Now I guess you can often find them frozen in upscale markets, but certainly in centuries past not all memorials were held in late summer or fall. So I didn’t worry about not having them. GL P1020612

Now that Pearl has moved back to California, she has a giant pomegranate tree right near her front door! And this time I have the seeds to add to my recipe. A pomegranate is a wondrous thing; I remember an orchard of them near my house as a child, and the first time I broke into a fruit and discovered the honeyc GL P1020587 omb of juicy red seeds. My grandson Liam eats each seed carefully, biting it and sucking out the juice, discarding the (mostly) pithy part.

One pomegranate yielded just over a cup of seeds. I boiled my wheat tonight, and ate another apple, and now that I have told you some of the story of my week, I will go to bed happy and in love.

This man lived and made me love him.

June 24, 2015church, deathkoliva, memorials, Met. Anthony Bloom, prayer for the deadGretchenJoanna

Today marks three months since my husband fell asleep in the Lord. I recently learned that P1000485 in the Orthodox Church a memorial service is often held at three months (as we did at 40 days), and because we also are commemorating The Nativity of St. John the Baptist today, it was convenient to have these prayers right after the Liturgy. I made koliva again but decorated it a little differently.

I like what Metropolitan Anthony Bloom wrote on the subject of prayer for the dead:

What does it mean to pray for the dead? Are we asking the Lord to act unjustly? Certainly not. By our prayer, we bear witness that the dead have not lived in vain. We show that as well as the many worthless things they did in their lives, they also sowed the seed of charity. We pray for them with love and gratitude; we remember their presence among us. And our prayer for them must be supported by our lives. If we do not bear fruit in our lives of what the dead have taught us, our prayer for them will be feeble indeed. We must be able to say, “Lord, Lord, this man lived and made me love him, he gave me examples to follow and I follow them.” The day will come when we shall be able to say, “The good that you see in my life is not mine; he gave me it, take it and let it be this for his glory, perhaps for his forgiveness….”

The life o P1000496crp f each one of us does not end at death on this earth and birth into heaven. We place a seal on everyone we meet. This responsibility continues after death, and the living are related to the dead for whom they pray. In the dead we no longer belong completely to the world; in us the dead still belong to history. Prayer for the dead is vital; it expresses the totality of our common life.

–Metropolitan Anthony Bloom in Courage to Pray

40 Days

May 9, 2015church, death, food and cookingkoliva, memorials, panikhidaGretchenJoanna

P1130350 It is traditional in Orthodox churches to have a short memorial forty days after a death, and though my husband was not Orthodox, I am, and I am the one remembering and praying for him. Last week my priest generously held this service, called a panikhida, and I prepared the dish of boiled wheat called koliva for us all to eat together at the end of the service.

I’m sure that in homogeneous cultures women learn from other women how to make this ceremonial food, as they work in the kitchen together. I learned from other women via the Internet, and it worked out fine.

P1130314 boiled wheat drying The essential ingredient is boiled wheat – but actually, even that is not essential, because sometimes it is rice, or lacking wheat, barley or another grain can be substituted. But the image of a kernel of grain being buried endures, as in the Gospel of John Christ speaks of His own coming death, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

Below is a picture of the koliva at a one-year panikhida for someone else, which had been held the week before at my church. That one was decorated with gorgeous yellow roses.

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I boiled the wheat, which was said to be enough for 40 small servings, and then laid it out on towels to dry for a couple of hours, as the Greeks in particular like to do. One Greek woman made a strong point about what she considered the superiority of this dry quality, contrasting it with the Romanian koliva which was said to be like pudding.

Most koliva that I had eaten was also more loose and dry, so that appealed to me. But I also read that the Romanians often decorate their wheat with chocolate, which custom I planned to imitate. P1130224 blanched almonds

I included a small amount of cumin, cardamom, and cinnamon — less of the cinnamon than most people do — golden raisins, almonds and walnuts, and orange zest. It was the first time I had tried blanching almonds, which was easy and fun. When after blanching I squeezed the skins off the nuts, one of the nuts shot across the room and into my open pots-and-pans drawer. I haven’t gone looking for it yet. P1130341

Some of these ingredients were mixed into the wheat as soon as it was dry, but the walnuts I chopped and spread on top, under a layer of graham cracker crumbs which is put there to keep the last layer of powdered sugar from dissolving and disappearing into the wheat. You want it to stay on top and be gleaming white. The usual technique for the top is to lay waxed paper on the powdered sugar to flatten it and make it smooth, bu koliva w graham crackers t I put the final layers of my dish together in the church kitchen where I could not find any waxed paper. My alternative method didn’t work so well, which is why the surface of my finished product has some flat areas, some imprints of my fingers, and some sugar untouched. P1130317 blue candies

I decorated the top with Jordan almonds and chocolate pastilles, and with some little blue baking decorations that I separated out of a color mixture.

The panikhida was held in the evening. Several people from my husband’s church came and stood with us near the Crucifixion icon and we all held candles for prayers and hymns and “Memory Eternal.” Then I scooped out portions of the koliva into little Dixie cups for people to eat together in honor of my dear husband. As it is spooned up everything gets mixed together and sweetened by the powdered sugar, and one tries to give everyone a bit o P1130350 f chocolate or a candy. The koliva recipe was judged to be excellent.

That morning of the 40th day I drove to the cemetery to see the grave marker that had been put in place, and to bring some flowers. There were barely enough nice blooms left on our snowball bush to make a cross on my husband’s grave, so I added some calla lilies and roses, and I sat for a while on the grass there. On the way over in the car I had listened to jazz on the radio, to feel him close to me, but at his grave I sang, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life.” P1130330