Saying Goodbye

This short story won the January 2024 Photo Prompt Contest with the Center for Creative Writing. The story is a mixture of true story and fiction and I am so pleased that it was chosen as a winner. It took a lot of emotional investment for me to create this piece and I hope you love it!

Saying Goodbye

by Cathy Bown

I never liked pecan pie. 

Most people don’t believe me when I say that because I grew up on a farm. Pie was served every Sunday night when the entire family gathered for supper. One of my aunts would always serve me a slice of pie, but I never ate it. Most of the time, I let my cousins have it. If I got desperate to dispose of the pie, I would wander into the bathroom when nobody was looking and toss the offensive treat into the trash. 

Pecan pie was my father’s favorite. He would bake one for every holiday, his birthday, and most Sunday dinners. He couldn’t get enough. When my father was having a rough time in life, his family members would bring him a pecan pie. 

Pecan pie was my least favorite. When I was young, my mother tried to bake a pecan pie for my father’s birthday, and it turned out too underbaked and liquid filled. My father, trying not to hurt my mother’s feelings, drank some of the pie with a straw. I couldn’t stomach pie after that. 

I had forgotten about pecan pie as an adult. When nobody forced me to eat it, it vanished into the background. 

And then, my dad died. My aunt, not knowing it would be his last day but instead knowing he was ill and wanting to lift his spirits, brought a pecan pie to his home the day he passed away. 

When the body had been removed, and the visitors had gone away, I sat at the kitchen table alone with the pie, untouched in the center. It seemed so sad, just a lonely pie that would never serve its purpose. Made for a man who could never eat it, the pie was destined for the trash bin. 

As the night moved on, the silence of the house was deafening. Everyone else had long passed out, exhausted from the tragedy of the day. But I found myself unable to sleep, riddled with grief, and unable to accept the loss. 

Hours passed like this, just me and the pie. At five a.m., as the sun broke across the horizon outside the kitchen window, I found myself hovering above the pie, fork in hand. Instead of slicing a piece as a rational person would do, I slid the fork tines into the soft center of the dish, scooping out a bite and sliding it into my waiting mouth. 

Bite after bite, I shoveled. Not tasting, not thinking. 

I only knew that I had to eat the whole thing. I don’t know when the tears started falling, but they did. So, there I sat, stuffing bites of pecan pie into my mouth, barely tasting, barely chewing, barely breathing, crying hysterically over the loss of my father and the taste of the pie. 

When it was gone, I placed the fork inside the pie pan and laid my head on the table. Before I knew it, I was fast asleep.