One of Lynn and my favorite restaurants recently closed. It was a neighborhood Italian restaurant, and when Lynn passed, the owned gave me a bottle of wine as a condolence gift. Lynn judged Italian restaurant based on how good their eggplant parmesan was, and this restaurant passed her test on our first visit. We went there on special occasions, even if the occasion was just having a really nice day. The last time we went there was the weekend after we learned she might have cancer. Her medical appointment was on a Friday, and her doctor told us to try to have a “relaxing” weekend while we waited for the results. Her doctor then turned to me and told me, “It’s your job to distract her.” Lynn usually had a million things going on in her head, juggling different work and life problems. That weekend though, we went to the beach, stopped at random, fun restaurants for bites, and she really tried to keep herself relaxed, and not overthink the possible worst case scenarios. Our dinner that weekend at the Italian place was sweet. It’s dim, crowded, small, and full of pictures of the family on the walls. Our home is in the neighborhood I grew up in, so the pictures of the owners’ teenage boys in their football uniforms were of my high school alma mater. We chatted with the owners about where their boys would be playing the following year, how good the food was, and random life things. Lynn passed away about two weeks later.
We had two, shared favorite restaurants, the other being a Puerto Rican restaurant. The Puerto Rican restaurant hosted an evening for people to gather a few days after she passed. After that, it was too hard to go back to both those restaurant for over a year after she passed. The owners intuitively understood. During the week of Lynn’s posthumous birthdays, a few friends and I would often go to the Italian restaurants to enjoy Lynn’s favorite dishes and lemon drops. That restaurant never become a regular place for me again, though it was comforting to know it was just a few streets down, cozy and inviting.
It was a sad surprise to find out they were closing, especially knowing how absolutely passionate the owners were about cooking Italian dishes. Their dishes were generations old recipes. I did not feel inclined to go one last time, for some reason. When the (Italian) restaurant where Lynn and I had our first date closed, I had one last meal there alone, and reminisced with Lynn in my head the whole time. I suppose this time around, 10 years after Lynn has passed, I am more at peace with these “sacred places.” I have thanked them in my own way over time for how they have benefited my life… for playing a small but significant role in Lynn and my relationship, by holding space for and bearing witness to our shy beginnings, our highs and lows, and subsequently, my chance to say goodbye to them alone. It definitely feels like a tug at my heart, a “yearning” knowing that I will never get to be in a physical space to relive moments with Lynn, a sadness that I will never get to take someone to these places to share a story of it’s significant to Lynn and I. Sigh, nostalgia sometimes begins with a random meal with a crush, that happened to be a sweet memory in the making, becoming a longing when both the person and place are gone, and hopefully evolves to “just” a sweet memory, with a small garnish of sadness.
