Matin 32

A Sweet Life

By Sumaiya Matin

I took up baking almost on a whim, on my thirty-ninth birthday. There was no cake, electronic gizmos, or trendy clothing pieces for gifts (material things I would have desired a decade ago but requested not to receive). Instead, my husband and I sat at a Lebanese restaurant on the north side of town reminiscing about the year gone by. He asked me what I wished for now. I looked at him with soft eyes and said, “To live my life as if these days are my last.”

The problem was I was not sure what a worthy life was—one that felt achievable and now. Like little teeth, the confusion gnawed at me. I consoled myself by dashing to my kitchen cupboard during the middle of that night to extract a mixing bowl, whisk, and cupcake pan. I made peanut butter cupcakes.

“What are you doing?” My husband caught me flabbergasted with flour-covered hands as my baby crawled down the stairs unsupervised. It was at that exact moment I realized I had a new calling: to bake the most delicious goods I could and consume them.

When I resigned from the Alzheimer's and Dementia unit of a local hospital I was working at, I took with me the memory of an elderly couple—John and Martha. John was a patient, and I was providing support to the family, discussing all the options for transitioning care into a long-term care facility.

During one of her visits, Martha gave me a cardboard box and asked if I could place the contents in John’s room. We opened the box together. There were black and white photographs: John in a baseball uniform and cap, John with a fishing rod out on Lake Rosseau, John leaning against a motorbike with chiseled jaws and thick-framed 70s’ sunglasses, John with his two daughters Lily and Amanda playing cards in a living room when they were five and two. John, ever so incandescent from soaking in rays of joy.

“He was an easygoing, simple man.” Martha smiled at the photographs in her hands, which were marked with protruding veins and well-manicured, burgundy-tinted nails. Martha smelled of plumeria. “He had many hobbies and he shared them with the girls. They were never short of an adventure, or of something to learn.”

Martha pointed to the photograph of John fishing. “Lily would not stop crying that day, seeing the worm on the hook. John told her about the life cycle of worms and fish. He told her about how lakes change people, make them more patient.”

Martha pulled out a small red clay pot out of her purse. A succulent jade plant with shiny evergreen leaves embroidered with a red tint. She handed me the plant. “If I could, I would like to leave this by his bedside. They live long and fight odds.”

I nodded, taking the plant from her hands with gentle care. I guided her to John’s barren hospital room. There were white walls, a bed, a plain white desk, and a few chairs. Certainly, these mementos would add a flush of colour, preventing John from fading into oblivion like his surroundings. Maybe even help him remember.

I placed the box and plants on the desk, then began to scatter the framed photographs around the room.

John was sitting up on his bed, gazing ahead with furrowed eyebrows. Martha approached him, her heart full and eyes yearning. She cupped John’s chin in her hands and whispered that she missed him dearly. It was then that John brought his hands forward like claws and scratched her. Martha jumped back screaming, while John continued to lunge toward her, mumbling under his breath in a gruff voice. Two nurses surged into the room and gently restrained John.

I do not know what came over me, but as I watched John wrangle himself out of the nurses’ grip while Martha wept by the doorway, repeating “It is me, John. It is me. How can you forget me?” I froze. The John in the photographs remained within the confines of the frames, and the one before me was someone, something else. A human form was transfiguring into a belligerent animal. The mere frames of memory were what gently held the distinction. It was a poignant moment of utter absurdity.

I was a new social worker at the hospital at that time and yes, I had seen aggression in the patients on this unit before. The confusion, the disorientation. However, something about John shook me—hard. I ran out of the room without looking back.

A few weeks later, my supervisor, Natalie Davies, asked me why I had not completed my notes. I was falling behind on my cases and well, I found it challenging to see Martha again. The thought was there, parked at a corner in my mind, to follow up with her, but I did not pick up the phone and I did not arrange a session. I avoided John’s room, taking alternative routes to get places. I took longer lunch breaks to wander various floors of the hospital and side streets outside.

I returned one day after lunch to find Natalie Davies sitting in a little corner of the floor I called my office. Short, blonde, and imposing as a glacier. “I’d like to talk to you about your performance lately.” A sternness in her tone. “What is going on? I have not seen any progress on your cases recently.”

The word progress stung me. Evolution for all things was always thought to be changing in a forward direction. All I could say was, “I don’t know.”

In retrospect, I could have told her that I was grappling with the reality of transiency, which I often counselled patients about. I could have told her that I wanted to understand how the essence of a person could be so malleable in the hands of time and disease. I wondered what made a life worth living, and what someone would say about me as my bones became brittle and as I could no longer be recognized under skin folding like origami with every passing day. Have I ever touched another person in a way that was significant enough for me to live on in their memories? What would happen if their memories crumbled with their mind, as John’s did? Were we all as transient as our memories and imaginations?

This was a week after my birthday, and a few weeks after that, I saw John again while scarfing down the cream cheese frosting of a red velvet cake (by now I had committed fully to my sugar quests).

The layers of the cake were flush and fluffy, clouds in my mouth as I prematurely, albeit neatly, cut out a hot, triangular slice. It was the third kind of red velvet I had made that week. A few days prior, I baked one with oozing white fudge between the layers, and another with viscous applesauce. I was mixing and matching tastes and smells all whilst closing my eyes here and there to imagine myself as Marie Curie at the chemist’s table on the height of discovery—of something spectacular.

I had taken my experimentation out to a cottage in Parry Sound. I sat by the cottage window licking my spatula. And then, there he was, out on the pier on a foldable chair, looking out into glimmering water.

For a moment, what I saw did not strike me as odd. It seemed a natural progression, the convergence of time, place, and people. I considered inviting John in for tea. The kettle on the stovetop blew its whistle. The brew was ready. The sparkly sugar cubes were stacked by the jar of heavy cream.

As I stood on the other side of the open window with my hands curved around my mouth, shouting for nearly a minute, a flock of red-breasted nuthatches rustled branches as they flew off into the cobalt sky, and a horn blew from the mouth of a nearby river. John did not hear me. He fizzled out soon after, and that night I woke multiple times to the sound of my beating heart, which progressively resembled a wall clock. Tick tock, tick tock. It was as if I were blindfolded and muffled by a long scarf, coarse in texture and sprayed with the fragrance of a cemetery. Decomposing flesh and bones in thick soil, mingling with the scent of roses resting on graves.

I considered explaining all this to the doctor I visited occasionally at the walk-in clinic (I had adopted him as a family doctor, although not officially): the waking, the oddity of a heart sounding like a clock, seeing John. But I did not. I sat with my hands clasped together and my head hung in shame as he raised his eyebrows at my blood sugar results. I wondered if him being a South Asian man in his late fifties had something to do with my stooped posture and the sudden loss of my voice. The ‘uncle,’ as I imagined I could call him if I ever saw him at a family or friend gathering, had henna-dyed hair and asked way too many personal questions: What did my husband do for a living? Why hadn’t I taken my husband’s last name? Did I have children and what were they studying? After ticking off the personal questions (and I imagined he had a checklist in his mind), he returned to the matter at hand.

“Have you been recording your sugar levels? I asked you to report back to me with them.” He was a soft-spoken man with a covert kind of authoritarianism. He peered at me with curious eyes with a squint of judgment.

I shifted in my seat. “I went to the pharmacy for the strips but they were out. I was supposed to go back for them but— ”

“But?”

Silence crawled over my skin and I twitched in my seat. What was the best way to tell him that the reason I did not go back for the strips was that I was too busy baking?

“I was very busy, doctor. You see, I am looking for a new job.” (And this was not true).

He nodded and a smile spread across his face. “Don’t put off the real things in life. They can get buried very easily.”

I imagined him wagging a finger at me.

He prepared a requisition for blood work. Said I should test my blood again in a month.

My father frequently tells me that sugar is poison. He complains often of having too much or too little of it in his system. It is the reason he rarely leaves his house. Nearing ninety, he spends his time reading, praying, cooking, and meditating. He has concluded, perhaps, that these are the remaining activities of a worthy life or the worthy activities of a remaining life. He is debilitated by the thought of death, so much so that he will not see me. Or is he busy preparing for it? In either scenario, my worth to him in these late years is questionable.

Tick tock, tick tock. I ask him to join me for a trip to Konya, Turkey to visit Rumi’s tomb, and after my many attempts to convince him, he finally does agree. However, the night before our scheduled trip, my mother calls to inform me that he has not packed his suitcase. At 11pm, my frantic fingers stomp across my cell phone screen.

“I booked the hotel for us, dad. I made the childcare arrangements. I want to spend time with you. You are almost eighty-five, who knows when you will—why haven’t you packed your suitcase?”

He says nothing.

“Will you be there?”

Then finally, “Why don’t people understand? I am sick, I am sick.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before, that you changed your mind? I spoke to the airplane about your blood sugar; we crafted a plan together to address any kind of emergency. You’ll be okay. Please, dad.”

The rest of the exchange is indecipherable; my father’s tears flood the phone line. All I can make out is, “You don’t love me and you don’t believe me, do you? That I am so sick that I cannot go. You don’t care at all.” And although I cannot see him (and I haven't for many years now), all I can envision is a figure morphing into a state of deformity, an amalgamation of a quivering father and John gnarling, both twisting together into one being whose cries, silence, and gruff combine into simple white noise.

The morning after, I also cancel my flight to Turkey. I spend my time, instead, on an exquisite four-tiered black forest gateau. I make sure to add extra cocoa and double the filling, consisting of chocolate, cherries, fresh cherry jam and hot cream. Eighteen pounds of joy that I leave on the kitchen table for the family to bask in.

In the afternoon, I take my child out for a walk in the snow. She forges ahead with an adventurous spirit, with no regard for sharp slopes or the jaws of frost. She takes off her mittens to plough the snow with her hands, then tastes it with glee. She jumps up and down, giggling at the crunching sounds. I laugh along with her.

In an unforeseen slip of her feet, she loses her balance. A haughty draft pushes her farther and drives her face down into the snow. She begins to wail and I run over to her, outstretching my hand. She stands back up, smiling.

I watch her, thinking to myself that the body is strange. Whereas I once felt it in the palm of my hand, now it slithers out. Spills out. Scatters. Can I pick myself up like this child, and even if I cannot, how does one cultivate a joy so indestructible? Despite the unknowns?

We decide to head back inside for hot cocoa. As I slip a handful of marshmallows into both of our cups, I notice the black forest gateau I had baked is no longer on the kitchen table. I scan the kitchen counters. I peek into the oven, the fridge, and even the microwave. It has vanished.

A reckless wave of discomfort rushes through me, leaving me jittering and bitter. How will I make it to nightfall? I will have to bake it again. As I pace the kitchen back and forth, the corner of my eye catches the trash can. The black forest gateau sits disfigured, its top half spilling over the edges. I hover over it, bleary-eyed, as my husband strides in, fired up.

“Yes, I threw it away. Do you want to poison yourself with sugar? Tell me, why are you doing this?”

I begin to walk away. “Leave me alone, it’s none of your business “

“And what about this child? Don’t you want to live long enough for her? Or me?”

“You don’t understand.” I dig my face in my hands. The poison floating in my bloodstream cures me, if not permanently, just for the time being. It holds me from the inside as I melt into the tears of all my disappointments, my loneliness, my anticipated losses. The people I have lost and will lose, both in my mind and in actuality, and the body that sometimes no longer feels mine.

“It is not too late to change the course of things.” My husband takes the remains of the cake to the trash can outside in case I am compelled to scoop them out.

I am writing a letter to John that I will not be able to send:

Dear John,

I am truly sorry I ended my work with you and your family so abruptly. I am sorry I did not follow up with Martha beforehand, that there was no termination, no closure. It was hard seeing you that way, John. It was as if I had known you personally over the years myself, although I had not. Just like your family, I was holding onto your essence, and the absurdity of your transfiguration frightened me. You were going before you left. Our lives can be so intertwined with those of others (and naturally so, as we are humans) so that if they are gone—even while they are here, even for a time, or even as we anticipate their departure—life’s meaning can blur, contort. They say the quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our relationships. If those relationships are as transient as we are in this time on earth—how can I go on in a way that feels meaningful? Death is inevitable, that for sure is certain. As are the limitations of this body. I am afraid. Very afraid—of it all meaning nothing. What can make me feel otherwise? John, can you blame me for wanting my journey to be a sweet one?

We all miss you, John.

Sumaiya Matin wears many hats as a writer, social worker, educator and public policy professional. She holds a Master of Social Work and is currently working toward her Master of Fine Arts (in Creative Writing) at the University of British Columbia. In 2021, she released a literary memoir titled The Shaytan Bride: A Bangladeshi Canadian Memoir of Desire and Faith (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2021). She lives in amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton), but you can also find her online at @sumaiya.matin on Instagram or www.sumaiyamatin.com