As my father was in the midst of passing away we ordered Hardee’s breakfast. We had hit a lull and figured we were in for more waiting. There are many things we aren’t told about death but one of the big ones is it isn’t quick. People linger. The body dies slowly and I’m not sure if it dies from what is killing it or from dehydration. In the last stage of dying people stop drinking. The body dries out and after three days they are gone. The coroner writes down heart disease, cancer, or whatever, but maybe it is all dehydration.
Either way during this wait we ordered Hardee’s. It was pretty soon after that my father passed away. Everyone left the room and he decided it was time to bounce. His time on this mortal coil was done for. He didn’t want to spend anymore time with people that would order Hardee’s breakfast.
The food arrived shortly after he passed. I somehow didn’t lose my appetite and, in fact, really needed to eat after watching my father gasping for breath in his final moments. The whole affair made me rather peckish one might say. So, I devoured my fried pork chop and gravy biscuit.
Here is the unintended consequences of that action. I know associate Hardee’s breakfast with my father, and especially a fried pork chop and gravy biscuit. It feels like a disrespect to my father to now eat anything other than a fried pork chop and gravy biscuit at Hardee’s. Yesterday, after going to the doctor for borderline high blood pressure and being told I needed to cut down on sodium and other unhealthy things, I went to Hardee’s and ordered a fried pork chop and gravy biscuit.
Death is weird. Humans have always created rituals around it, and when we trickle it all down to the smallest portion of community, the individual we can get some strange ones indeed. Earlier this year I completed the ritual of the pants, and, as I realized yesterday, I have created a ritual around eating a fried pork chop and gravy biscuit. If a person’s soul lingers at all after death perhaps some of my father ended up in that first fried pork chop and gravy biscuit, and as I struggle with my new role within my family and long to ask my father advise. Perhaps there is a part of me that wishes to take him into myself through the consumption of fried pork chop and gravy biscuits.
David Huzzard Writes 