My mom was not a committed cook. Like her mother before her, I strongly suspect that a leading reason she had a kid quite young was that the sooner I was born the sooner I could take over the cooking.

It made sense why she wasn’t a particularly adventurous cook. Imagine the most picky toddler you know. The one with enough food preferences and opinions to fill a stack of encyclopedias. My mother put them to shame. She wouldn’t eat onions. Or anything that came from tomatoes and wasn’t pizza sauce or ketchup. Or cheese. Or brown bread. Peanut butter. It was a little silly.

But she liked to bake. Not entirely from scratch, but with love. Her pies were of the can poured into the frozen shell type, but they were still better than anyone else’s. I didn’t even know you could make your own pie crust until I was way older than one should be. Her Rice Krispy squares were better than the rest despite being exactly the same. She could do some magical things with several different flavors of Jell-o.

There is almost nothing savory that she made that I long for. With love, I would say to her face if I could that anything she made I can make better. And she wouldn’t disagree. That was her plan all along. But there are a few things she made, contained in the most wrecked cookbook you have ever seen, that still bring her right back.

One is her pancakes. She made the best pancakes ever, and that’s just a fact. I make her recipe exactly, with the only difference being that I don’t use my own fork to feed pieces of them to my dog - and not just because I don’t have a dog. It was truly twisted behavior.

Another thing that takes me right back to her are her butter tarts. They get made a lot at Christmas (Spoiler alert - a few people who read this may find some under their tree), and any other time I need to make something to share. They were my mom’s favorite recipe for a reason - they are incredibly delicious, and much easier to make than you would ever guess from eating them. Those tarts, those pancakes, her rice pudding, and a few other things are the closest connection to her I have.

I was thinking of the butter tarts in the midst of making nine dozen of them yesterday (You can make nine dozen in just over an hour if you have your ducks in a row - it’s very much a mom recipe). The recipe is on a piece of paper that was ripped out of some book or binder at some point. I have no idea which one. The paper is stained with a mystery red substance. It’s typewritten, appearing between a recipe for Chocolate Lime Sivirl, a name which presumably just shows what a pain in the ass fixing mistakes on a typewriter was, and a truly disgusting sounding recipe for lemon cream pie. I have never tasted either thing in my life. I have no idea who gave her the recipe, or where she stole it from. Her only addition to the recipe is a handwritten, and accurate ‘Excellent’ in the margin, and the cooking time - which oddly isn’t in the recipe. There is no single thing that makes me think of my mom more than that recipe, and I have absolutely no idea where it came from or how she got it. It’s both incredibly important to me and a complete mystery.

Like the pancake recipe, I have this recipe completely memorized. It’s not hard - it’s stupidly simple. But you can be certain that I pull both recipes out every single time I make them. They have to be there because she can’t be. I got the pancake recipe laminated a few years ago because it was completely worn out and about to waste away. There are a couple more handwritten copies of the recipe that I think she wrote to give to people that I have hidden away, too, but those are for emergencies.

She was pathologically obsessed with Christmas, and I miss her this week more than any other. But at least I have those recipes. And, as the name of the recipe itself says, I have the ‘Best Butter Tarts’ any time I need to say hi to her.

Merry Christmas!

1. There is a section about death I've thought about a lot in the past 12 hours

2. The second artist I talk about is the reason I started this whole book project in the first place. At a show of his the idea just slapped me in the face

3. I like it, and like any ego-ravaged writer I want more people to see it.

Thursday morning, for the first time in my life, I woke up beside a 50 year old woman. On one hand that admission makes me a little disappointed in the younger me who clearly lacked either ambition or game. But, more significantly, it fills me with joy to enter the fourth first-digit era with my wife, Tricia, certain in the knowledge that the best is yet to come with the 5s despite me having very little to complain about with the 2s, 3s or 4s.

It can’t come as that much of a surprise that we marked her half-century with a show on the big night - and another the night after for good measure. And though only one of the shows was my idea, and neither of the nights were about me, I think it was a pretty grand way to mark the big event.

As with so many things these days, there was a sense of grappling with a past that stubbornly refuses to also be the present in our decision of destinations. A newish but favorite club walking distance from us closed without warning last weekend. It felt like a kick on the gut, and we couldn’t help but wish we’d done more to help them survive. So we went to another small venue in a new location we’d been promising to get to without ever taking action. We can’t save the tragically challenged live music business with just our two wallets, but damned if we won’t try.

The star of the birthday evening was Bobby Dove, a wildly talented country crooner we’d first seen a year and a half ago during Stampede in great set on a patio at a brewery. The perfect setting for anything, really. This setting couldn’t compete with that, but it was a delight nonetheless.

The show was great. The pedal steel guitar yet again proved its primacy in the tiers of instruments. Bobby told a story about a woman in a truck at a gas station that afternoon that contained so much pent up rage and confusion about humanity that I truly felt seen. And any place that has a special of a burger, fries and a pint for $18 like The Blues Can does will never not have my loyalty. But it’s one more complicated moment that will stick with me from that night.

Later in the set there was a couple dancing in front of the band. A two step, I think, though you shouldn’t quote me. I was sitting close to Tricia, my arm around her like the player I am. I watched her as she watched the dancers. She loves to dance. She used to dance a lot. And I could see that a part of her wished that she was dancing up there with them. But she met me. I was, like some giant Footloose villain, very committed to not dancing, and through dumb luck on my part she was committed to me. So she became largely a retired dancer. My self consciousness and lack of rhythm was the foundation of my determined commitment, and a nightmarish episode at a wedding at the hotel at the airport 25 years ago made me never want to dance again. But at that moment, as I looked at her I felt very much like I’d let her down. Not that night. All nights. I imagined finding a dancing teacher who could work miracles. We’d have several secret sessions where I broke barriers and discovered a side of me that had been hidden for five decades. There would be a montage where you could see my fight against adversity and remarkable progress. Then I’d surprise Tricia with a dance lesson. I’d pretend, convincingly, I’d never met the teacher. I’d act nervous, and confused by her directions. But suddenly, the other students in the class would pull out hidden instruments and start playing a song - the kind only experts can dance to. And I’d grab Tricia and dance with her in ways she deserves, but that she’d never even imagined. Ways that would make Patrick Swayze just raise his hands in surrender. That would wipe away this sense of guilt I’ve always carried. The one that comes out whenever she watches dancers. So, if anyone knows a magic teacher…

Dancing, or my inability to do so, came out again tonight in the second show. Through magical circumstances, Tricia was birthday-serenaded by one of her favorite artists playing one of her favorite songs. It’s a love song - a rocking commitment to sticking together through anything you might face. We imagined it as our first dance at our wedding. It was narrowly the second choice - the first being a song called Highwire by David Francey that is incredibly beautiful, but would only work if no one really listened to the lyrics and thought about what they actually said about relationships. This tune, Kris Demeanor’s Back Door, was lyrically perfect. And amazing. But I would have needed a full body transplant to dance to it. We settled instead on a Postal Service song that is maybe a little less ideal, but beautiful nonetheless, and well within my exceptionally limited hoofing wheelhouse.

That Tricia had this song dedicated to her is one of the many magical things that have come from this A Young 50 project of mine. After seeing Kris play dozens of times over the years without ever talking to him, I finally broke down and bought him an afternoon’s worth of beers one day last spring. And I wrote about it. And I’d like to think he’s a friend now. Last week he emailed me to tell me about this show. I told him it was the day after Tricia’s birthday, so he’d made me look like a hero with the invitation. He asked what old song she’d like him to dust off for the occasion. And there was no question in my mind. So he dedicated it to her. And hugged her after the set. And I felt as I watched that no matter how dismal the world might seem, it’s also a pretty amazing place.

Kris was dressed in a shirt and tie, which seemed like an aggressive choice of outfit given the hyper casual coffee shop setting. But midway through the show he explained that his partner’s father had died a couple of weeks ago, and this has been his outfit. The best way to honor the dead, he hypothesized, is to wear their clothes. I think there’s something beautiful to that. But everyone I’ve known who has died has been much smaller than me. I wondered for a long while after he said it if there was a metaphor there - some sense that I couldn’t shoulder their legacies even if I wanted to. Or maybe I just need to make larger friends.

This writing project has been, and continues to be, my favorite thing I have ever done creatively. But at times I’ve gotten impatient that the audience doesn’t grow as quickly as I’d like, or that sometimes things I write aren’t embraced quite like I’d like them to be. But these two nights I was struck hard by something. We saw four different artists in total - Emily Triggs opened for Bobby and their band last night, and Ella Jean Haggis enthralled while opening for Kris tonight, then accompanied him through his set. All four are incredibly talented, providing countless combined moments of awe that people can do what they do, and can think to express themselves like they do. Besides that, what they all have in common is that they were all playing in front of far too few people. Tiny fractions of the audiences they deserve. And while that has to frustrate them all on some level, you would certainly never guess it from watching them. They’ve worked endlessly to achieve their mastery, and they just showed it off to whoever happened to be there to see it. They did it, I imagine, because they couldn’t imagine not doing it. And they do what they need to do - from Bobby deciding to be a classic country crooner while growing up in Montreal to Kris opening his set singing German verses from his family bible while holding a puppet’s head - without a lot of regard for what will best grow their audience. It perhaps not what I was supposed to be inspired by coming out of these shows, but I find myself there anyway.

When I was three my mom sewed me a clown costume for Halloween. She didn’t really sew - her sewing machine was mostly just used as handy ballast when I was building a blanket fort - so this was more noteworthy than I knew at the time. So I was a clown that year for Halloween. And the next year. And the couple of years after that.

Here’s the thing, though - kids grow. And I was a kid. But mom had exerted her maximum amount of effort on creating the clown costume already, so there were no adjustments to be made. So, I eventually became a clown who was exceptionally prepared for a flood - and who was wearing a suit so tight you could tell if he was circumsised.

Putting my foot down on the clown front led into the sorriest era in Halloween history. The house coat. The first year - grade 2 - I went to school as a boxer. I didn’t have gloves, mind you. Or boxing shoes. Or boxing shorts. Or anything to indicate that I was a boxer. I just wore regular shorts and a bath robe, and told everyone I was a boxer. I did not win the costume parade that year.

In grade 3 the story was that I was a pirate who had just gotten up and was about to start getting ready for work. I had absolutely nothing that would indicate I was a pirate. I was just an asshole wearing a bathrobe over his clothes telling a dumb story. The peg leg, the sword and the parrot must have been just off stage, I guess.

In grade 4 I wore a tan shirt and tan shorts, and pretended that I was naked under the bathrobe. Nothing freakish about being dressed as a creepy flasher in an elementary school. I didn’t win the costume parade that year, either.

I mercifully wasn’t at school for Halloween in Grade 5. The bath robe got a rest. But it was back the next year. I stuffed a plastic bag full of wadded up paper, and carried it around with me. I was a guy who had just woken up and was carrying his garbage to the curb. Jesus.

None of those costumes were my idea. Mom came up with them. All on the evening of October 30th. And every year I just prayed with all of my heart that it was cold enough for trick or treating that we had to wear winter clothes, and I could just pretend that I had my costume on underneath.

My mom was, in many ways, a saint. But even the best of us leave dark legacies behind when they leave. It’s not hard to figure out why I hate costumes.

Happy Halloween to everyone. Except for mom.

These are the shelves I see every day as I sit at my computer. The bottom shelf features different pieces of pottery that my son has painted for me each year for my birthday, from when he was about 4 until this year when he was 15 - and hopefully much longer. The newest edition is the axolotl on the right side with ‘70!’ on it’s belly. That was his hilarious attempt to suggest that since I was 50 I was basically 70. I did not laugh.

The top shelf I realize is a bit of a shrine. A lot of one, actually. On the far left side is an old leather football helmet that I bought at an antique store in New Mexico one of the countless times I was trapped on an endless road trip with dad, hitting every frigging antique store in existence. I really don’t miss those damned stores. The two baseballs in front were both caught at Calgary Cannons game way back - one with my dad and one with my grandfather. Grampa caught his barehanded. It was super bad ass - though judging by the number of times he shook that hand the rest of the night I would guess he would rather not have done so. The Janis Joplin poster was something I found when dad died and I was cleaning up his stuff. She was the only musician, for a long time, that he liked that I thought made him cool. The carved purple hippo in front lived on my grandfather’s desk forever, as did the coin display on the far right side that you can only barely see. That one originally came from the desk of my great-grandfather, a longtime mayor in small town Quebec who I never met, before winding up with his son-in-law. The watch was allegedly my dad’s dad’s, though I have no prove of that claim. The T and the O were from an old printing press somewhere. Mom got them at yet another antique store - this time one I mercifully was not at. The horse statue and the cowboy bronze are close to the last example of each I had, but growing up there were countless western bronzes in our house. I spent almost as much time being bored at the studios of bronze artists as I did at antique stores.

And then there is the big wooden urn. That was the home of my mother for about 16 years - which, I just now realized, is longer than she ever lived in any other single place in her life. It’s empty now - at the advice of a wolf, she moved from the wooden house into a stone one on a hill overlooking the mountains last year. But I keep it there, and still find it comforting in some weird way. Or maybe I just still remember how much I paid for the urn at an art gallery when she died, and I am trying to wring out the maximum value. Or, most accurately, I just don’t know what else I would do with it. It would make a great cookie jar if it weren’t for, well, you know.

I think about ‘stuff’ a lot. I used to have a whole lot more of their stuff. When mom died I tried to grab as many mementos as I could. And Dad was what could generously be called a hoarder, so I wound up with far, far more stuff than I could ever have imagined when he passed. For a while I kept lots - some on display, and some stored away. Over time, though, less and less has remained. There was stuff that I didn’t enjoy looking at - too much baggage. I couldn’t think of anymore reasons why I was keeping it, so I didn’t. There were a few things that were just really fucking ugly, and I was at a stage of my life where I would happily have told them that to their face if I could have. And there were things that were redundant - I didn’t need them to remember, and they didn’t bring anything new to the table.

It’s like I started out with a whole army full of stuff, and now I am down to just an all-star team. But each one has a story, and each one brings joy - or something in that family - just from looking at them. Which is probably why I have never gotten blind to the things on that shelf despite staring at them daily for many years now.

It only took 17 years, but I’m now in a specific place - there is nothing that is gone that I have any regrets about, and nothing that remains (aside perhaps from things stored somewhere that I have forgotten about) that I am unsure about keeping. I’m finally surrounded by just enough ghosts.

Every holiday is a little loaded when your parents are gone. But I find Thanksgiving to be one of the easier ones. I have lots of great memories of family gatherings, and helping to make the meal when I was younger. I remember one Thanksgiving where the turkey was somehow frozen like a popsicle when we tried to carve it. But the family traditions around the day had shifted once my grandfather died in 1999, and I spent more of mom’s last Thanksgiving days without her - with friends or my own family - than with her. So, unlike Christmas, for example, the training wheels came off in plenty of time I had learned to ride Thanksgiving on my own before I had to.

This year will be odd for a different reason - it’s the first time in well over a decade that I am not cooking a turkey. We are going to a restaurant for the big dinner. And I couldn’t be more excited about it, really. I love cooking turkeys. But it’s a lot of work, and I’m happy to let someone else do it this time. As long as they make good stuffing. If they don’t there will be hell to pay.

I’ll leave you with one of the t-shirts from my store. There are 131 different designs in there now, and my favorite one happens to be on a Thanksgiving theme. I’m not sure what it says about me that this is my favorite. But it’s everything I think is funny - which makes sense since I made it:

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Birthdays

I had a birthday two weeks ago. I turned 50. That was a tough number to digest in a few ways. Besides the obvious fact that it means I'm getting freaking old, the hardest part of it has to do with my mom. She died a couple of weeks after her 56th birthday (it was a long time ago - she didn't have me scandalously young). I've obviously been closing in on passing her final age since the day she died. But now I'm in the same decade and it seems closer than ever. Her fifties were when she got a cough she couldn't shake. The one that her doctors called pneumonia or pleurisy but couldn't solve no matter what they prescribed. It's when she could feel her mind slipping - and wasn't alone in noticing it - but didn't know why. And it's when she ultimately went through the worst year I hope to ever witness. It wasn't a partial decade entirely without redemption for her - it's when she first met her daughter in law, for example. But there was far more bad than good, and 40 percent of the decade she never got to claim. Thinking about all that from a different, closer perspective kinda sucks. It's times like these that I wish I didn't remember dates or notice patterns like I do. It would be easier to stay out of my own mind.

Firsts

I had a call out of the blue last week to have coffee with a friend, Josh. He's a guy I have known his whole life, though never particularly well. His dad and mine were close friends since before either of us were born, and I spent most of my first 17 new year's eves at their home. But then things shifted after I left home. I rarely saw his parents, and only really knew them as the adults they were when I was a kid. But Josh apprenticed to be a horseshoer under my dad, spending several days a week with him for years. In a way that is more shorthand than reality, and much more devoid of bitterness than it sounds, I've often thought of Josh as the son my dad never had.

Josh wanted to talk about Dad, and it was past time for it since the last time I had seen him was at Dad's funeral in 2019. It was interesting to talk to someone who saw dad differently than I did - who knew a different guy in many ways. But it was also a pleasant surprise to see that the difference was far less stark than I imagined. Josh's eyes were open to my dad's ‘quirks’ in ways I'd frankly never thought to expect. It was a good talk. But I'll never not be nervous about those first conversations with a friend of dad's - not until I know the lay of that particular land.

The other impetus for this catch up was another reason that it was overdue. Josh's dad had died almost exactly a year ago, and I had had COVID at the time and couldn't go to the funeral. As I was sitting at the coffee shop waiting for him, I was thinking about that year of firsts after a parent dies. His first birthday that he isn't there for. Your first birthday he isn't there for. The first Christmas. All the grandkid firsts. It goes on and on. If there is a blessing of the end of the first year it's that most of the firsts are in the rearview mirror. I told him that, and I could see him recognize the relief in that. But then I felt obligated to point out that the seconds could pack a punch, too. And that I can attest that every point up to the 17th has some sharp edges to look out for. Beyond that I can't yet be sure, but I can sure bet on what's likely.

Welcome to the first official weekly edition of Dead Parents Digest. Exciting stuff.

We’re going to spend most of our time here in front of the curtain, but I also want to dip behind it and share some of the process that goes into writing a book - my book - and getting it out into the world. I may be the only one who would be really interested in that, but I would be really interested in that if I was in your place. Really, it’s all about me.

The Challenge

The biggest challenge when getting ready to launch a book is getting a group of people together to launch it to. You need to make people care about something that doesn’t yet exist. That effort will take many forms over the next year (like this newsletter, for example).

One way I want to explore, though, is something a little different. Not too many people have used this approach in this way that I have seen, but as soon as I had the idea it seemed to good not to try.

The Next Launch

I’ve opened a store. It’s on Etsy, and it’s called, not surprisingly, Dead Parents Store. The tagline for the store is ‘Dealing with crushing loss through humor and contemplation’. The goal is to create (and sell) things that will very specifically talk to people who are facing exactly what I am writing about, and to do it in a way that isn’t often done.

Right now, the store has been launched with 28 different t-shirt designs, and one guided grief journal called Conversations With My Dead Parents. All of the designs are my own, and there will be many more that come in time. Right now they are almost all available in just one color and one design. That’s intentional, not (just) a lack of visual imagination on my part. The design fits a style of quote t-shirts that are popular. Once the SEO kicks in and people start coming to the store more, I can take the more popular designs and start adding options, or put them on sweatshirts or mugs or whatever else people might want, too. Learning, then expansion.

The sayings on the t-shirts now, and anything that will come after, are guided by a series of feelings that feel pretty important at this point in the Dead Parents creation process:

• They need to contain a recognition that things have changed, and that dealing with it is a process, not a destination

• There needs to be a bit of a surprise in the presentation - I don’t want straight forward sentiments, or typical grief platitudes. If the saying makes me wanna puke, it’s not on my shirt.

• Though they are very self-centered designs for the most part, they can’t be boastful, performative, cheesy or obnoxious. Self-awareness, self-deprecation, and accepted imperfection are more than welcome.

• They have to make me laugh. Or at least chuckle. I don’t care about anyone else, but I have to be amused.

Expansion

Besides shirts going forward there are a few things I would like to add if the store grows as I hope it to. For example, I would like to create greeting cards for people who have lost their parents. Both to send to them, and for them to send to other people. For example, one design I imagine to send to someone who recently lost a parent:

“For Someone Who’s Sick of Casseroles and Sympathy” Inside: “This card contains neither. Just acknowledgment that this sucks.”

And for someone who has lost a parent and wants to reach out to those around them:

“Thanks for Not Saying ‘Everything Happens for a Reason’” Inside: “Your presence was perfect. Your platitudes were non-existent. Thank you.”

It’s hard to know what to say in those situations for everyone. I think there is room for us to do better than what’s in the Hallmark aisle.

Why A Store?

The point of this store is threefold:

• I just think it’s important. These are things that fit how I think, and I am willing to bet that I’m not alone. And it’s fun, too.

• It is a negative-cost way to add people to my mailing list - I don’t have to pay to get their attention. This happens in a number of ways - the domain name that is all over the store points to my mailing list so even curious browsers can see it; buyers will receive a free thank you gift that they will have to give me their email to get; my domain name is printed on the inside collar of the shirt; and each shirt will ship with a card suggesting they check out this newsletter.

• It’s a way to fund the entire book process through the sales.

How A Store?

Thanks to technology, the logistics of something like this are pretty easy. I design all the shirts online through a company called Printify. When someone orders one through Etsy, Printify gets the order, creates the shirt or shirts, and ships them off. They have printing partners around the world, so the shirts will be printed as close as possible to the buyers. I pay for the shirt, the printing, and the postage (it’s free to the customers, and a fixed rate for me), and then the extra is profit. I don’t have to touch anything, or pay anything up front. The same thing will be true for any type of item I add later on, too - you can get pretty much anything printed on demand. And Etsy is fully automatic, too. You just set up the site, add in keywords, and visitors to the site find you through search. Once I have had the idea for a shirt and posted it, I never have to be involved in the process again.

Wanna See?

If you have the next great shirt idea, let me know!

DeadParentsStore.com

Until next week!

If you're here, you probably know what it's like to lose a parent as an adult. Or maybe you're watching someone you care about go through it. Either way, you've found the right place.

I'm T.O., and I've been navigating life without parents for longer than I care to calculate - my mom died 17 years ago, my dad six years ago. I'm writing a book called So, Your Parents Are Dead... that I wish someone had handed me back then.

This newsletter will be a mix of stories, observations, and the occasional piece of advice that doesn't involve telling you that "everything happens for a reason." Because let's be honest - that's not helpful.

Most of what I share will come from my own experience of figuring this out as I went along. Some of it will be about the process of writing and launching a book about grief in a world that prefers to pretend death doesn't exist. All of it will be honest about the fact that losing your parents really sucks, it changes everything, and pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone.

I'll be sending something your way most Fridays. No spam, no platitudes, and definitely no suggestions that you should be "grateful for the journey."

If you know someone who might benefit from this kind of straight talk about loss, feel free to share. We're all in this together, whether we want to be or not.

Thanks for being here.

-T.O.

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