The Trials and Tribulations of Caring for a Loved One with an Illness-Secret Recipes

As I started to write this blog post, I was going to continue the topic of “Important Papers” from my last blog post. And this topic actually does tie into what I have decided to write about now. And what I am writing about right now is very apropos, as I just got a Facebook message from one of my mom’s old time friends  asking  for my grandmother’s Baked Spaghetti Dish. Unfortunately, my grandmother’s dish, which was a favorite at family holidays, went with her as she never wrote it down and we did not ask for the recipe.

It is now the night before Passover begins and I was just thinking about when my mom’s health started to deteriorate, and my mom asked my sister and me to make the matzo balls for the matzo ball soup.

My mom used to make the best matzo balls and now we were being asked to step into this tradition. She had showed us her secrets years earlier to making the lightest Matzo balls. Making the matzo balls was not that hard, but the realization that our roles were changing was.

The next year, my mom was too ill to host the Passover Seder and I took on that role. The finality that my mom was not able to cook anymore also hit us that night. She offered to make the soup base.  She brought a pot of soup to our house or so we all thought. However, my mom’s dementia had kicked in and there was no soup in the pot. Luckily, I had made my mom’s matzo balls earlier in the day and my relatives and I improvised and we quickly made soup.
My mom never knew what we did.

The point of this is that, if you are caring for a loved one with a long term illness, ask to be shown the secret recipes before it is too late.  It may be hard for you to think that your loved one will not be able to take on the role that they have always had. It will be bittersweet. But when you are caring for a loved one,
especially dealing with a sustained illness, all kinds of papers and notes can
become so important. Like a recipe, this will always bring back memories, and
help you to carry someone’s spirit forward.  

And start thinking about who you will share your secret recipes with.