A Meal of Memories

{Content warning: it’s about death, and also memories.}

The ghostly flesh of my spirit feels fragile and insubstantial, but still, I'm struck by the mustiness of the old restaurant, and I realize that the senses of taste and smell stubbornly remain and will be the last to go.

"Your table is ready, sir. Please follow me," a dreadful attendant says in a deep rumbling voice that sends a shudder through my ghostly being. I dare not look at him directly as I follow him.

Inside the restaurant, everything exists only in dimly lit shades of bronze and amber. Flickering gaslight lanterns send shadows furtively wavering in corners, and the walls seem made of the old stones of bridges inscribed with ancient dates. When I reach my booth, the foot-thick solid oak table glistening with well-worn varnish is hard to the touch, and it looks like it’s used for butchering. I feel like a small child sitting on the expansive and unnaturally warm mahogany-colored leather upholstery of the booth, its seams studded with thick jet-black rivets like nails in a coffin. Softly it beckons me to lie back and sleep forever, like an insect caught in the maw of some exotic flesh-eating plant.

The dreadful attendant silently hands me a thick leather-bound tome of a menu with many hard laminated pages, and I open it at a random page in the middle. I try to look at him again, but I still can’t. His mere presence is fear itself, and his octopian head with its tentacles and overpowering smell of carrion is even more terrible. It is a window into madness, which forces me to look away. This terrible attendant is dressed like a waiter at an expensive restaurant, but I sense within him a suppressed malevolence far beyond even the worst of what humans can understand.

"You will have five courses of your choosing," he announces, his voice like boulders crashing together.

Breathlessly, I look through the menu. The entries seem limitless, and they keep changing, every single one lost from moment to moment.

"I advise following your first impression," says the terrible voice.

Immediately, I know what I want for my first course. I try to press onto it hard with my ghostly finger as if to pin it down, and I hurriedly request it before it too disappears. Within moments, the appetizer is brought to me by an ashen spirit that can only be vaguely seen out of the corner of one’s eye.

As I bite into it and feel its familiar crunchy texture in my mouth, I see her face looking at me expectantly.

“Well, did you have something to tell me?” Samantha asks me in her lovely voice that I had forgotten but now clearly remember.

I'm back at that Mexican restaurant near my old high school a half-century ago. I remember that I used to love the hard-shell tacos there. Looking at Samantha, I take in her long blonde hair that seems to shine like the sunlight of a gentle dawn and her aquamarine eyes that once charmed me. She's my first crush, and we’re sharing this simple plate of tacos as a kind of innocent date that dare not call itself one.

She's still waiting to hear what I have to say.

There's something I badly want to tell her, but instead, I talk about our classmates and homework. Still, she looks at me hopefully, with a hint of tenderness in her eyes. Then gradually, the memory fades. I almost tear up when I realize that it was only a fleeting dream and that I must return to that dark place. The realization also dawns on me that this is a meal of memories.

“Four more courses,” the dreadful attendant announces.

I take a moment to look outside through the window at my side and see the throngs of spirits pressing together through the unutterable night, all waiting to meet their loved ones at the appointed time. I think back on how moments ago when I arrived here, I saw the spirits of my parents and grandparents, an aunt who used to take care of me, a friend whose life was cut short before his time, and an older woman I was kind to when I was younger. They had all seemed glad to see me again, but there was a certain sad finality to their joy. Then one by one, they had all disappeared, flitting away like ghostly imaginings.

His voice brutally jolts me out of my musings. “You must order your next course or forfeit it.”

I hurriedly pick something from the menu, and it is brought to me by another insubstantial attendant.

Now I can taste the miso soup that I used to enjoy so much. Its salty taste and the seaweed floating in it remind me of the ocean. I see myself surrounded by a group of college classmates, and we're at a restaurant during our trip to Japan.

“Are you ready to climb mount Fuji tomorrow? It’s going to be a great experience,” my friend Haruki says as our sushi arrives.

I take a sip of hot sake and bite into a piece of salmon nigiri. The fish tastes so fresh, and I think the food is such a highlight of the trip.

“Before that, let’s go out for karaoke tonight… you promised,” Laura, one of the women in the group, says with a smirk on her face.

The alcohol is starting to get to me, and I agree enthusiastically. Also in the back of my mind is my recent success in school after all my hard work and my recently getting to know an advisor for grad school.

Again, the memory slowly fades away, and I’m disappointed to be back at this terrible restaurant. The thought strikes me that these might be the only memories I get to take with me for… whatever comes after this. I raise my eyes and start to ask him, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

"You have three more courses. Choose wisely," the dreadful attendant tells me, and I sense something different in his voice. I soon realize that it is dark and rumbling laughter.

Quickly, I order the next course.

I recognize the stained and pitted dining room table, the broken ceiling fan, and the laminate countertops of the nearby kitchen. I’m back in the dining room of my old home of thirty years ago, and I'm eating cheese pizza together with my young daughter. I can see her round cheeks and brown eyes glowing as she chows down on a slice. The mozzarella cheese feels so thick and stringy and satisfying as we eat it.

“Thanks, daddy! You know I love pizza,” she says simply.

She's growing up so fast. I remember when she was saying her first words as though it were a moment ago. Then, as I keep eating the pizza, countless more days like this one come to mind, laid out before me like a picture book. I see the story of how she gradually transformed into quite simply the most interesting young lady I've ever known, while I was too busy with work to notice for a long time. Like a lighthouse shining through the years, her radiant and nostalgic smile for me on her wedding day reaches out and comforts me even now. I wish I had spent more time with her when she was younger like this. I want to stay with her now! Can’t I stay here…? Please?

Slowly, the memory fades away, and I’m in tears as I’m back at the dark restaurant. Then I hear the dreadful rumbling voice counting down inexorably.

“Two more courses.”

Now I’m taking a long time to pick the next one. There’s a fear that’s wormed its icy way into my heart. I’m worried that no course will include the love of my life, my wife, Estella. She was always such a caring presence in our home, quietly bringing order and beauty to our everyday life and only expecting a smile in return. If I can't have a memory of my gentle Estella, then I don't know what'll happen to me.

I worry that I’m overthinking things, remembering the dreadful attendant’s advice to go with my first impression. Finally, I pick the penultimate course, and my meal is brought to me.

I instantly recognize the flavor of my own beef stew that I used to love making for family and friends. It’s simple comfort food with potatoes, meat, carrots, and thick brown sauce. Everyone always loved it. My wife loved it. Looking around, I find myself in my beautiful rustic mountain home in the Appalachians. It's the place where I spent my last days. I'm sitting at the dinner table with my best friend Jim, and I think Estella must be out in the garden tending to the plants. I long to get up and see her, but I can only follow the rigid track of the memory. Instead, I pick up my wine glass, take a sip, and the taste evokes thoughts of our trip to the south of France for one summer. Then I look at Jim as he slowly savors a bite of the stew, and I’m struck by how he looks healthy, and his hair hasn’t turned entirely white yet.

“You always made a mean stew, Alex. Really, it’s the only reason why I come to visit you still,” Jim says, trying to inject some levity.

“Thanks, Jim,” I answer with a laugh that quickly turns into a hacking cough.

Then he lowers his voice, and I see his eyes are glistening with tears, even though he's trying to hide it. “Also, I just wanted to say that… it’s been great being your friend, Alex.”

As much as I want to tightly latch on to even this scrap of remaining time in my life with whatever hands, limbs, fingers, spirit, and spit, and grit, and teeth, and claws that I can muster, the memory fades away before I can respond to him.

I don’t want to hear the terrible voice, but I can’t stop it or unhear it. “One more course,” the cruel rumble comes, and I hear a note of satisfaction and triumph in the otherworldly voice.

Now I really start second-guessing myself, and I take a long time to choose. I know I shouldn’t, but I’m so afraid of making the wrong choice. What was her favorite dessert? Why can’t I remember what it was? Finally, I pick something, and I almost change my mind at the last moment, but then I decide to go with it.

My dessert comes, and it’s a slice of chocolate cake. I hope with all my heart that it will bring a memory of my wife. I know that my Estella loves chocolate, just like me. I bite into it, and instantly I'm taken back to my childhood home. I hear my mother finishing baking a cake in the kitchen, and I remember the excitement I felt as I waited for her. She brings it out, and I see it’s chocolate, just as I had hoped! Tears are streaming down my cheeks when I realize it wasn't the memory I wanted. Still, through my flowing tears, I decide to enjoy the memory as best I can and remember my childhood innocence one last time.

I bite into it, and it feels so moist and sweet.

“It tastes great, mom. You always make it the way I like it,” I tell her.

Dad is there too, and he and mom are eating their own slice of cake with a glass of milk and talking about their day. I feel safe and warm with them.

This time, I have no energy left to fight as I’m ripped away from this happy time in my life.

“Your meal is done,” the dread attendant intones, his every word a stake driven through me. “You have eaten the food of the dead, and you may now enter the underworld.”

Teary-eyed, I follow him.