Olivia Potts on life, death and the healing power of banana cake
There’s a scene in Love, Actually where Daniel, played by Liam Neeson, is giving a eulogy for his wife, who has died of cancer. She wants the Bay City Rollers’ ‘Bye Bye Baby’ played as the casket goes out. Daniel says to the congregation: ‘When she first mentioned what was about to happen, I said, “Over my dead body.” And she said, “No, Daniel, over mine . . .” ’ Then the distinctive first notes of the song begin to play. If the worst happened, do you know what your parents or your brothers and sisters or children would want?
I had no idea about anything
When my mother died suddenly, I quickly realised I had no idea what she would have wanted. I realised I knew much more about what she disapproved of than what she actually liked, as though she were a forest clearing or a cave, defined by the negative, by what wasn’t there. I knew that my mother had kept a list of hymns she wanted at her funeral in her bureau, but I couldn’t find it. I had no idea what readings she’d want, or what kind of service she should have. I had no idea about anything.
Mum had only been dead two days, and already there were so many decisions to be made over the minutiae of it: coffins, venues, readings, flowers, charities, newspaper announcements. So many opportunities to second-guess those decisions. Sitting in our living room, the undertaker asked if we wanted a large picture of Mum propped at the front, or a photo on the programme. Relief coursed through me that I knew the right answer for once: ‘God, no,’ I said.
Every choice felt crucial
And then, of course, there was the food. We had a meeting. No, more than that – we had a tasting. Dad, my sister and I sat around a table sampling dishes that could form part of the wake buffet, like you might in the run-up to your wedding, only considerably bleaker. Wake cake. Wake pies. Wake sandwiches.
Every choice felt crucial. How many pork pies should there be? There was a frisson of panic that went around the table when it was suggested that perhaps we were lowballing the pork pie consumption of mourners. Yes, we definitely wanted tuna finger sandwiches; she loved tuna sandwiches. Presented with little pots of seafood, we discussed seriously whether they were what Mummy would have wanted at her funeral. Mum was allergic to shellfish. In the context of these cockle pots, of course, she was literally the least important person.
Emotionally catatonic
There were so many things to care about, to be troubled by: why would we care about what she could or couldn’t have eaten at her own wake? Later, at the wake, I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed; I was in hostess mode, which felt like much firmer ground. I was polite when asked how I was doing, told them I was coping. Really, though, I was emotionally catatonic. I talked about the flowers, which now stood proudly on our dining table and had not, in fact, been incinerated, declaiming their beauty in increasingly overblown terms as the afternoon wore on.
Piles of banana cake
There were enough pork pies. No one touched the seafood pots. Piles of banana cake that I don’t remember ordering flanked the table. I was heading back to London that night, and I loaded up slice after slice of leftover banana cake into a rectangular green biscuit tin that, turned over, bore a little white label with the name POTTS written in my mother’s clean, clear, distinctive handwriting – block capitals, just like her death announcement. It was a part of the house, a part of her life, and I was taking it back to London with me.
It has everything you need
This was far from the best banana cake I’d ever eaten. It was slightly insipid, a little rubbery. But it was sweet. And as I ate it on the train, I found my appetite had returned. If you asked me now, with the benefit of hindsight, I think I’d prescribe banana bread for grief. It has everything you need: stodge for heartache, sugar for wobbliness, and potassium for fatigue. I don’t say this flippantly. There is a reason we turn to food for comfort. Certain dishes have ways of bringing contentment, or at least a nudge towards equilibrium.
I’d never have thought that those fingers of unexceptional banana cake could do that, but I was wrong. And I can tell you how to make a much better banana cake than that one. It’s dark and damp, with pockets of caramel and chocolate, and the demerara sprinkled on top gives an addictive crunch; it provides all the same comfort as any banana cake should. It’s not a cake I often make for others, but it’s what I’ll invariably make when I want cake for myself.
Olivia's story and recipe are extracts from A Half Baked Idea (How grief, love and cake took me from the courtroom to Le Cordon Bleu) , reproduced with kind permission from Fig Tree/Penguin Books.
For further reading, see our list of six books on grief .
