If you’ve been widowed a hot minute, you know there are many first and lasts you experience over the years after your partners death. This might sound weird to some people but Sunday evening the kids and I ate the last of Tony’s barbeque. Smoked sausage and brisket burnt ends to be exact.

We spent the afternoon cleaning the weeds out of the garden that Tony built and cared for in the 7 years we lived here before his death. Yard work and gardening was never my forte. In the first spring of our after, I planted nothing and let the weeds take over. I hated looking out the backdoor and seeing that mess. Last year, I decided to give it a go and planted as assortment of vegetables. Turns out, a garden of produce to keep alive is less stressful to me than a plot of overgrown weeds.

Since we were working on Tony’s garden, one of the kids suggested we finally eat the BBQ. More than once they have mused over missing his BBQ and cooking. Given our schedules, he did most of the cooking too. I miss his food, but I also miss having someone with whom to share that duty.

In honor of spring, I went to the deep freeze and pulled out the cryovac bags of smoked sausage and burnt ends. After I placed them in the sous vide to reheat them, I turned to prep the asparagus from our garden.

With picky kids, it’s not often everyone at the table is excited for dinner. Now don’t get confused, they were not excited for the asparagus. It was all about the BBQ. As dinner cooked, our oldest and I talked through what we think Tony used to make the sausage. He said he wished he’d learned more from Dad about how to smoke BBQ and we decided we should try and recreate it over the summer.

Then we sat down to dinner together. Even though it was a little bittersweet to know this was the last time we’d ever enjoy his BBQ, we smiled. I looked across the table at the empty seat and internally thanked him for cooking us one more dinner. It was just as good as we remembered.