Member-only story
Tears for Breakfast
Dealing with death
I froze as I walked into the grocery store. Ahead of me was a display table with a pyramid of Panettone boxes. I recalled Ben’s excitement last year — and every year — when he saw a similar table holding boxes of his favorite holiday treat. His face lit up like a Christmas tree. We bought two because they sold out fast.
Ben called Panettone pan dulce — sweet bread. In recent years, we did almost nothing for Christmas except we always bought two boxes of Panettone and a third if they were still in stock the next week. We ate our pan dulce with coffee for breakfast.
I wiped away tears as I put a box of Panettone in my shopping cart. I almost didn’t buy it because I thought the pan dulce would have the sourness of sorrow rather than the cake’s signature sweetness. But since Ben and I had so few holiday traditions in recent years, I wanted to do or have something that reminded me of our Christmases together. I needed to cling to something.
The next morning, my breakfast consisted of the slight bitterness of strong coffee, the sweetness of Ben’s pan dulce, and the salt of many tears.
© Dennett 2024