In Sane Grief

...a "sweet thing" (family talk), banana bread. It was a re-do. I baked some banana bread a little less than a week ago and the result seemed to indicate that I didn't bake it long enough. Even though a skewer inserted near the center came out "clean", as the loaf cooled the center dropped. When I sliced the loaf down the middle it was clear the loaf hadn't baked all the way through. I dismembered the bread, froze the good ends after letting them sit for 24 hours and, since I had enough bananas for two loaves, decided to try again in a few days...that day being today.
    I added an extra 10 minutes onto the baking time, today. Again, the skewer, this time inserted into the very center of the loaf, came out "clean". And, yet, as the bread cooled the center dropped, again, although the crater in this loaf isn't as large as was last loaf's crater. So, I'm doing the same with the bread as before, dissecting out the center and freezing the rest. It's a good thing I have no bananas left, because I'd feel obligated to try again. I don't think that would be emotionally productive. This is the third time in the last month I've had crater problems with baked goods. Before the first I replaced my baking powder. After the first I replaced my baking soda. After the second I extended the baking time. I'm not sure what to do, now, without burning the bread around its perimeter.
    As I stood at the sink, after today's semi-disaster, washing the utensils I'd used, I mused about how many times I used this recipe successfully when my mother was alive. "Hmmm..." I wondered, "...can grief be so heavy that it affects not only how one does things but the product of what one does? Are my baking products responding to my grief?"
    I doubt this is true, although I consider it as worthy of pondering as just about anything else at this point in my life. While I was considering this puzzle, though, I also wondered, assuming my mother is watching my sudden lack of talent for baking, what she might be thinking about this. The solution I used, dump the gooey centers and keep the good ends, is one that I can trace to my mother's baking philosophy. It's right up there with another of her baking credos: If the turkey falls on the floor while you're taking it out to baste it, pick it up, put it back in the pan, figure that know one will know the difference and, anyway, the continued baking will kill whatever it picked up off the floor.
    Pondering this launched me into a flight of fancy about exactly how my mother might be able to participate in my experiences since she's no longer physical. I came up with an amusing supposition: Let's posit that, once a person is dead, taking my mother as an example, because what remains of her, whatever that is, existed previous to her death, since it enlivened her, and she has the ability to enter into the genetic elements of those to whom she's related, thus being able to continue to participate in physical, one step (or, perhaps more) removed. Two reasons why she might be able to do this:

1. The "substance" of which she is comprised, now, is the same as it was before her death. It just no longer has a physical home.
2. But, her descendants and other relatives (two of her cousins are still alive) share acute genetic commonalities, implicit in their cells, making it very easy for my mother's current "substance" to slip into the physical elements of those to whom she's related, just as she was slipped into her own physical elements, but, in this state, with far more individual determination.

    I know, I know, there are lots of non-fantastic problems with this fantasy, all of which assure my sane brain that this is merely a fantasy. Consider, for instance, the fate of the souls of the dead who have no living relatives. Would they be exempt from participating in this activity? What about what we are discovering about human genetics: That it's beginning to look as though we are, really and essentially, all related, in the sense of all of us all being able to be traced to a common ancestor (which isn't such a startling thing, if you think about it from an evolutionary point of view)? Would the amount of common genetic material one shares with someone else (say, a direct descendant, a daughter, for instance, versus a cousin versus someone that we would ordinarily consider "not related") have anything to do with the quality an quantity of the experience in which one was able to participate? Is it possible that the insubstantial "substance" of someone who's dead could conceivably slip into just about anyone, granting, of course, that the level of experience granted through this slipstream would be different? Could that substance also slip into the physicality of closely related animals? What about distantly related animals? I'm not talking, of course, about reincarnation...I'm talking about, hmmm....what would be a good phrase? How about "borrowed incarnation"?
    It would make a fascinating premise for a speculative fiction novel, I think. More important, though, it gives me another metaphor for guessing about where my mother could be, depending on her abilities and proclivities, and how capable she is of being aware of this system, of which she was formerly a part. This puts it into conflict, of course, with the idea that life after death, if there is such a thing, is rather like life after birth...it's so different that not only does one not hang onto the memory of being a fetus, one has no reason to remember that state. Still, it's fun to imagine. It gave me pleasure shivers when I was at the sink.
    It's also, of course, completely insane, but, you know, the longer I live the more quotidian insanity seems. If, in the extreme, insanity is considered a coping mechanism for those we choose to label "insane", it seems likely that insanity is a coping mechanism the less obviously touched among us use every day...especially when grief over loss is dumped into the mix.

Labels: Afterlife Metaphors, Death Analogies, Effects of Grief, Grief Fantasies