Days before she died, my cousin Marcia and I sat around her sister’s dining room table. The meal long
finished, we chatted into the evening about old times. Perhaps it is the way karma works, but somehow
the conversation came around to what people might say about each of us after we died. We both
smiled at the thought that her brother born with cerebral palsy and a speech impediment would be the
one who would draw the biggest crowd to his funeral, the one about whom there would be so much to
say, a testimony to George’s beautiful nature and the unwavering devotion of his parents and siblings.

I spoke with Marcia again the morning of her scheduled medical procedure, a procedure intended to
clear a blocked artery. She felt a little “off” she told me, blaming the new medicine the doctor had
prescribed prior to the surgery, but I had already heard it in her voice, and I felt it too. Something was
off and it hovered.

Marcia spent most of the day in surgery after a major blood vessel exploded during the procedure. She
was delivered to intensive care in an unconscious state. She never spoke to us again. She died in the
night after hospital visitation rules had sent us all home. Turns out Marcia drew a big crowd to her
funeral. There was much to be said about her life, her significant accomplishments, and her beautiful
nature.

Yesterday in the mail I received a copy of the 2009 literary journal, Alimentum, containing Marcia’s first
nonfiction essay, “The Proof is in the Pudding,” in which she described cooking and baking to keep busy
after the death of her beloved father. She wrote,

“I started baking and cooking “sit-down” meals—meat loaf, pot roast, lasagna—to distract from the constant barrage of grief. To anchor me in my sea of grief. I receive notes and calls from friends and neighbors. Good, God-fearing people who bless me and try to reassure me that my father is with God now. God this and God that. I thank them for their condolences and their prayers and masses, but I do not share their faith. I look around for evidence of such an immediate and caring God. I search for proof of life everlasting.

I am searching for God in this pie dough. A trustworthy—a crust-worthy-approach. I have only recently mastered the butterscotch pie. The old-fashioned cooked kind. Not the pudding with the whipped cream thing. An honest-to-goodness, buttery, brown sugary, stir-over-medium-heat-until-your-arm-falls-off butterscotch pie. I am measuring out ¾ cup of brown sugar, then a stick of butter. I am cracking open three eggs and separating their yolks from the whites. They will never be rejoined again. I am so struck by that thought. Aha, the old chicken and egg conundrum. I have prepared a beautiful crust and now I am blending my cornstarch into my sugar. Blending them so well. So carefully. I am adding my cream and milk; slowly. I am putting this mixture on the heat. I resist the temptation to turn it up and get the mixture hot quicker. This has to be done over medium heat. It will take time. The time will vary. It doesn’t matter what the recipe says, it will take as long as it takes and not a second more or less. We know not the time nor hour. I whisk in the egg yolks and begin the stirring. I walk away from the pan occasionally in this early stage, but when it begins to warm and the sugar is well dissolved I stand there like a sentinel to watch the transformation. To observe and be there for the moment of its becoming.”

She searched for God and proof of everlasting life in the mixture that would become dough for pies. She wrote: “Transfiguration. It is a miracle. I have witnessed a miracle. And what other comfort people derive from faith, I pour into my pie shell and begin to believe again that in the end we are transformed and we go on. I hold the proof here in my floured hands.”

They come back to us these people we have loved. Today, I hold the proof in my hands, Alimentum,
Issue Eight, Summer, 2009, pages seven through nine.