The Last Supper

What would yours be?

This piece comes with a sensitivity warning as there are themes around terminal illness, but ultimately it’s a call to celebrate life.

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Sometime in the noughties, a popular conversation starter in the company of aspirant foodies was the question: what is your last supper? It was based on the premise that you knew it was your last meal, and you could choose anything your heart desired. There was also a book asking high-profile chefs the same question published at around the same time. I remember asking it with a flippancy that came easy to a starry-eyed 20-something food stylist far removed from mortality. Now I feel the full weight of this question.

What goes without mention is that for the last supper you may not even cook. Or that it might be lunch and last the length of a working day (even if the chairs are less than comfortable) but no one dares move from the table because with that comes a certain finality. Or when it does come to an end and the beloved cousins who have travelled far to say goodbye drive away, a rainbow will appear briefly overhead – as if it were all staged.

On the day before Christmas eve, my family and I found ourselves in the haematologist’s office, sitting in silence. My eyes settled on a pot of LEGO Hibiscus flowers gracing the doctor’s desk, its hard plastic edges softly lit by a design lamp. One minute we were waiting for my dad to be admitted to hospital. The next, thanks to a last-shot prednisone prescription, lunch was on. It was nothing short of a miracle. I went home to start preparing the first in what has become a series of last suppers.

Listening to Carol of the Bells and swiping a peeled cucumber across the mandolin for a salad my father loves, there wasn’t sadness; we’d been blessed with a meal we didn’t think we’d have. Rather, a sobriety settled over gestures once filled with an almost rambunctious enthusiasm for sharing sensory pleasure through cooking. As if a certain innocence was slipping quietly away through the crack underneath our stable-style kitchen door.

We feel it around the table in that it makes us gentler with each other, connected by a common pulse of awareness of another’s comfort: the meeting of eyes when the offer of second helpings is accepted, an unspoken acknowledgement that while Death may be standing in the room with us, as a German friend put it, Life is still seated at the table with us too. Right now, so much is concerned with the basic function of eating: is there capacity for digestion, swallowing, chewing? Of all the variables, taste is the most reliable.

And sometimes taste is enough, as Bernd, a Berlin friend, shared. Bernd, a natural cook and bon vivant who at the age of 80 still sucks the marrow from life, dedicated himself to making Boeuf à la Bourguignonne for his brother, who lay in hospital unable to accept sustenance in solid form. On his next visit, Bernd took that beef braise with him and dabbed some of the sauce on his brother’s lips, so his brother could, at the very least, experience one final taste of his favourite dish.

Sometimes it’s not even about favourite dishes, but a need to revisit meals from life’s various chapters. The second-hand cookbook my dad picked up at his local library – a gift from him to me for us – was an indirect request for the prawn curry on page 108, reminiscent of his ‘Maritzburg days’. This evening, for my dad’s birthday, there will be flat-roast chicken with a juicy stuffing of thinly-sliced button mushrooms, sauteed shallot, lemon, and thyme, that’s pushed under the skin – a memory of family meals past.

The recipe comes from Cook with Ina Paarman and, on opening it, I recognised my mom’s curling cursive in fine pencil lead under the recipe headline: Delicious! She’d marked up the brand-new pages with all her notes before handing it over as a gift from the family. At the time my head was deep in French cookbooks dreaming of a life that emulated Eugénie’s (Juliette Binoche) in The Taste of Things. To Ina’s credit, the spine on her book is falling apart from use, the French titles not so much.

Now cooking is a surrender of self, an act of service. Your wish is my command. What is your wish? And yet, in this case, the act of service feels so insignificant, so hopelessly inadequate, because it’s impossible to give what is really wished for: more time. This is not intended as a morbid reflection but rather a call to action: go and cook your last supper today. Or this year at least. We may not know which meal will be our last, but if we do, body, mind, spirit (or perhaps all three) might not be in a place to enjoy it as fully as we can right now.

My dad and I would love to hear from you, what will you cook this year as a life-affirming ‘last supper’ meal? Leave a comment below if you feel moved to share.

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