THE TOMATO SAUCE

A dear friend made a homemade tomato sauce for us, a kind gesture to ease the weight of everyday meal-making, offered out of pure love.

Everything that comes out of that friend’s kitchen is so delicious, it could easily rival a chef’s. So a few days later, I was excited to use it. I set the water to boil, dropped in the pasta, and set the timer. Everything was on track, until I tried to open the jar.

You know how impossibly tight those lids can be. And yes, I work out. But strength has nothing to do with it when grief is already pressing on your chest. I twisted, tapped, pulled, tried every trick. Still nothing. With the clock ticking and the pasta bubbling, frustration grew until it tipped into something deeper.

Because it wasn’t just about the jar.

It was about all the little ways I still need him. The countless moments when I wish he were here, not for something grand, but for something as ordinary as opening a jar of tomato sauce. That’s how grief sneaks in. Through the cracks of daily life. In the quiet frustrations that suddenly crack open into tears. One second you’re making dinner, the next you’re aching with absence so raw it makes you want to scream, cry, even throw the jar against the wall.

But instead, you breathe. You swallow it. You keep going.

That night, dinner wasn’t spaghetti with homemade tomato sauce. It was cacio e pepe, simple, comforting, enough.

And maybe that’s a metaphor for life after loss. It may not be what you planned. It may not be what you wanted. But somehow, you make do with what’s in front of you. You create something nourishing from what you have, even if it wasn’t the meal you hoped for.