Delicious Life

Proverbs 25:11 says that “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.” (KJV) When someone dies, it is hard to know what to say about it. My grandmother died this July, aged 95 years. She was always introverted and hated to be the center of attention, which complicated knowing what to say at her funeral. But we knew that we should serve cheesecake at the lunch reception after, because she loved it. 

I would not say that my grandmother was fond of the finer things in life. She was the kind of person who wears Alfred Dunner seven days a week and SAS shoes. She was very thrifty. She would turn a light off on you—sometimes even if you were in the room—to save money on electricity. She did not like people bringing her more breadsticks at Olive Garden or refilling her drink when she hadn’t asked for it. She did not really enjoy travel, though she sometimes traveled to visit family.

I would absolutely say that my grandmother loved the sweeter things in life. Some of my earliest memories of sweets are from her house. She always served dessert at every dinner, often homemade. She always had Entenmann’s doughnuts or coffee cake around. She enjoyed Coca-Cola. When we visited, she often made lemon custard, because that was my childhood favorite. In her later years, she had a small dish of ice cream every night after her shower and before bed. Every night. When she was suffering from dementia in her final years and could not carry a conversation, it was the custom in our family to bring a cookie or a piece of candy whenever we visited. It was always appreciated. 

In her final days, under hospice care at my parents’ house, my parents made her sweet tea. My grandmother was from North Carolina, so she drank sweet tea the way they make it in the South. It was very sweet. On one of the last days my grandmother was fully conscious, my father took her some sweet tea and she drank it through a straw and smiled and said, “delicious.” That was actually her final word on Earth, because she spoke very little in that last week. 

Delicious. My grandmother was a lifelong Methodist, even a member of the handbell choir, but I do not believe she was intentionally rendering a verdict on life in that final word. She was rendering a positive verdict on the sweet tea. But I think there was a kind of wisdom in that being her final word. 

Many sad things can happen in a life that spans 95 years. My grandmother’s parents divorced when she was young. My grandmother was widowed in her 50s and never remarried. She outlived two of her four children. She raised a grandchild. She did not die in penury—her house held good value and she lived for decades on my grandfather’s pension—but her life was not always easy. She had many sorrows. Yet she never lost her taste for cookies and candy and cheesecake.

My grandmother was as hooked on sugar as the rest of us, but she also had an appreciation of the gentle sweetness of life, what the French call douceur de vivre. Despite her hard times, she always enjoyed her lawn and the birds outside her window. She enjoyed listening to music. Despite her dementia in later years, she was reliably pleasant and rarely complained. She was not always happy—she was not one of those grandmothers—but she enjoyed what she had. Ecclesiastes 5:18-20 says “Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him: for it is his portion. Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God. For he shall not much remember the days of his life; because God answereth him in the joy of his heart.” When my grandmother remembered very little else, she remembered that there are sweet things in life and she enjoyed them. 

A sweet tooth is also a way of seeing the world. The good things from God are sweet to us. Proverbs 24:13 says, “My son, eat thou honey, because it is good; and the honeycomb which is sweet to thy taste.” And then the next verse suggests that wisdom shall be like it to our soul. “So shall the knowledge of wisdom be unto thy soul when thou hast found it, then there shall be a reward, and thy expectation shall not be cut off.” Samson and Jonathan were both nourished by honey in their struggles against the Philistines. Consider the land flowing with milk and honey. 

When someone dies, we sometimes struggle with how to make sense of what that someone has said and done. My grandmother was never a very expressive woman. She gave hugs, but she was not known for them. She did not say “I love you” at the drop of a hat. Despite a near-century of church attendance, she rarely spoke about her faith. She kept most things to herself. She did not even like to share family history, despite my mother’s passion for genealogy. She did not go in for long phone calls and advice. I never heard my grandmother expound her philosophy of life, but I think it was partially reflected in her final word. Delicious. Despite everything. Because of everything.

What does it mean to “taste and see that the Lord is good?” It may mean enjoying sweet tea on your deathbed in a way that reflects Psalm 118:24 “This is the day that the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” It may be reflected in dying like my grandmother, without a bitter taste in the mouth.