Chocolate Pie

I stood in the kitchen this afternoon trying to find some sort of snack that I could eat while my meatloaf baked. I stumbled upon all the fixin's for homemade chocolate pie, and I thought that would compliment the main course just fine.

While preparing to make the desert I found that my mind began to wonder to the topic at hand and without even a second's pause my grandmother's face appeared. I realized that the last time I had a slice of chocolate pie was June 5th, 1999. My grandmother entered and left life on June 5th and 1999 was the last of her birthdays that we openly celebrated. I had no idea that summer would be the last I would spend with her and that a year from that date, we would lose her presence in this life.

Chocolate Pie was one of Maw's favorite deserts, and every year for her birthday my mother would make enough for everyone in the family to eat. There was no cake, only pie. It stuns me how one simple desert can bring back a flood of bittersweet memories, and a feeling of innocence that is now years gone. It is something that is simple and easy but full of meaning and symbolism.

Today, almost seven years since my last slice of pie, I'll celebrate the birth of my father, her son, with a slice of chocolate pie. As I sit in my college apartment hundreds of miles from my family I have realized that even those who have gone on to heaven are closer than they really seem. It is in the things like chocolate pie we remember them and celebrate life and death because this world is not all there is. I just hope in heaven there is chocolate pie.