Loss: First My Friend, Now My Appetite

For a friend, dear but departed.

I like food. In fact, I love food. In fact, I love eating food – and there is a difference. Despite being accused (without merit) of being a picky eater, some of my most cherished moments have been accompanied by a (presumably unbalanced) plate of food, surrounded by those closest to me or simply in a party of one. Even in my least cherished moments, of which I’ve had my fair share, my appetite has always been far too strong to knock me out of my usual food routine. Rather, these low moments make a beloved meal or that perfectly timed treat all the more desirable. Come rain or shine, three-course dinner or corner shop snack, you could always count on me for perhaps too eager of a reply to that glorious question humanity has passed down for generations: “Fancy a bite to eat?”

But then my friend died. I stopped eating. In fact, I didn’t want to eat. I couldn’t eat — or at least I couldn’t find the strength to want to eat.

Only five hours before I received the tragic news I was, unsurprisingly, tucking into a plate of loaded fries at Nando’s. Yet for the next few days, I was thrown into an involuntary fast, unable to bring myself to accept what had happened, let alone to the dinner table. My body—which has served me pretty well so far—ran like an engine on empty, aching in a way I had neither experienced nor expected before that completely disrupted all of my old routines. It became a stranger to me. I became a stranger to myself. As for food, it became an utterly foreign concept dangling tauntingly before my grief-stricken face. Food became a past pleasure, an antique of happier days, an insurmountable source of anxiety in those first few days after their death.

The loss of my friend was my first bereavement, and now looking in hindsight, having dealt with a second loss, here are three things I wish I had known about food and grief in that terrible time:

#1 Expect the unexpected from your body’s reaction

The first three days after my friend’s passing could only be described as a disorienting dissonance between my head, my heart, and my stomach. Mentally, I was hungry and painfully aware that I needed to at least ingest something if I were to have the strength to do nothing all day. Yet even the thought of food made my stomach churn consistently. I didn’t eat because my stomach hurt. My stomach hurt because I hadn’t eaten. So, I didn’t eat because my stomach hurt. Forget grief, I had a paradox on my hands.

#2 Swallow your pride, if nothing else

During the initial grieving period, I made countless attempts to cook something small. Rather than resembling a cooking montage straight out of Disney’s Ratatouille – which is what, of course, my time in the kitchen usually looks like – every attempt ended with me frantically looking in all my cupboards, through tears, unable to marry any ingredients together into a dish I could have stomached at the moment, before collapsing into an inconsolable ball of helplessness. I felt pathetic. To add to my shame, one night I reluctantly made a sheepish call to my friends at 10 pm, begging them to stay with me on FaceTime and ensure that I persevered through making myself a bowl of pesto pasta. Of course, they happily agreed, concerned that I hadn’t called them earlier. Tears dried and pasta cooked, I sat down to eat with my friends still on the phone. In the end, I only managed three pieces of fusilli, but the encouragement from my friends was more nourishing than any meal could’ve been that evening.

#3 Mechanical eating is better than not eating at all

The return to term time while grieving was far more challenging than I had ever anticipated; this struggle appeared most poignantly in my eating routine. One of the joys of independence whilst living at university is that you can vanish into the isolated solace of your room much faster than you realise. If you don’t feel like eating, then you don’t. And no one will notice. For me, my paradoxical aversion to both food and hunger had started in my stomach again, only this time with added time constraints now that I had academic and extracurricular commitments to consider. It was only after five days, when I blanked upon a friend asking me to describe the food I had eaten that week, that I realised that I was heading down a harmful path of indifference to eating without realising it. I decided enough was enough and went down to order a comforting stack of pancakes at Oxford’s The High Street Café for my first real meal in a while. My appetite vanished after the first 2 bites, a sad shock to a girl whose former favourite pastime had become nothing more than a chore for survival. Still, by forcing myself through my favourite dishes, my appetite was soon restored, and my days became a little brighter.

***

Since then, I have certainly felt better, but not every meal has gone untinged with sadness. Yet, I feel that the remnant of grief I feel when I visit the restaurants that I had visited with my late friend is just another testament to the love I had towards them and the gratitude in my heart for having had the privilege of knowing their friendship. We always ate when we were together, all sorts at any time of the day. I still smile softly to myself about that bond, that communion over food when I take myself out, decline to sit in a booth, and only request a table for one.

If you are currently struggling with a loss, or supporting someone in a period of bereavement, please refer to the University’s page for a range of resources on dealing with grief at https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/welfare/counselling/supportive-resources/bereavement-loss

Alternatively, Cruse Bereavement Support and Samaritans are both charities that offer support to those in the bereavement process.