On Grief and Writing Through It with Sheila Squillante

Joined by Sheila Squillante, author of the newly released book "All Things Edible, Random, and Odd: Essays on Grief, Love, and Food" joins us to tell the story of losing her dad in her early twenties.

Sheila is open to visiting book clubs or doing readings/book events- reach out to her if you are interested! Find her on IG @sheilasquill, Tiktok @sheilasquillante, or visit her website- www.sheilasquillante.com

To buy her book- https://www.clashbooks.com/new-products-2/sheila-squillante-all-things-edible-random-odd-preorder?fbclid=IwAR0RX1SuqQm1YpstOSl36_w6PE6r9hw6-agPSohnrzvmBtWKi0UKiAteTLE_aem_AQSB9l7UvMz7RwSL1-reqTI4aE7ZTgRcIaqlynXpA36h1pCgT1iqIE-HD54lI4W1_pI

To read an excerpt- https://lithub.com/meals-and-memories-sheila-squillante-on-writing-to-remember-her-father/?fbclid=IwAR3XEa3vV3D5FDDaa7dqkoemIhWeYUJsauMC3dibtnWufq9I78b2Epf0MkM_aem_AQSZyubJJwRjBu6E6veNM9svmT30jucDI3a7zAA0jdTb97Bmoyi5BWfepc3T2xWBfkA

To find Sheila on Facebook: 
https://www.facebook.com/sheila.squillante?mibextid=LQQJ4d

Or on Bluesky:
https://bsky.app/profile/sheilasquill.bsky.social

Transcript

0:00

Hello, and welcome back to the grief trails podcast. I'm your host, Amanda. Kernaghan from, remember Graham's a small business dedicated to helping you support those in your life. Experiencing grief. I hope you'll consider sending someone a personalized card or a grief support box shipping within the us is always free. And we treat each order with special care paying attention to every detail. Listeners. I've been looking forward to sharing this episode with you. Uh, conversation with author sheila Squillante. Of the recently released book, all things edible, random and odd. Essays on grief, love and food. Sheila's also professor and director of the MFA creative writing program at Chatham university in Pittsburgh. Here. She takes us back to her relationship with her dad. Complicated and the way that many of our parental relationships are in our late teens and early twenties. And she shares openly about his death and her grief that followed. For listeners of the show who are also writers, you'll want to listen to tell the ad and to hear about her path to publishing. And for those who don't consider yourself a writer, she is a great example of someone who processed her grief largely through writing. Something anyone can do, whether you strive to share it with the world or with no one at all. Before we dive in. I just want to say, I wish I could give everyone who hears this episode, a copy of her book. It's not a book. I'm seeing a book talk or a name that everyone is going to recognize, but it's one you'll want to save her. She focuses on life and death through food. Meals shared and the memories that come with them. New traditions made like how she spends the anniversary of the death with her self-made ritual called dead dad day. It's beautiful and layered much like the story you're about to hear. Let's take a listen.

Sheila: 1:46

So I'm happy to share the story. I'm happy. Seems like a strange thing to say when I'm about to share a story about loss, but the story of losing my father, whose name was Richard's will auntie when he was 46 and I was 21. And I'll get to that part in a minute, but to give you a little background about. My life and who he was my parents were my father in particular was a an executive for IBM. He was a very kind of conservative self made guy. He was really smart and funny and dry. He had a dry wit. Sarcasm was kind of like the language we all spoke in the house, but he was also really withholding in terms of like his emotional expression. And I. Wanted desperately my whole life to reach him, to like him, want to, you know, feel that he liked me and understood me. He, so I have a sister that I grew up with. She's a little younger than I am. And she struggled we both struggled with our relationship with him in different ways. But theirs was more contentious. Always. And I was just the first daughter and always very, you know, compliant and mostly obedient. And again, you're like a good student and all of these things that I knew he appreciated. He wasn't, I don't think he was super happy to be married to our mother. It was a, you know, one of those situations where They kind of got pushed together for maybe the wrong reasons and it was a pretty big mismatch, I think, from the start. So I say all of this by way of like kind of showing you that he wasn't very present in our lives. He was, he really threw most of his energy into work and he was very good at work. You know, he was an executive for IBM. He traveled all over the world. He was intimidating, which is interesting because he was. Tiny. He was like this very slight man, you know, he's like 5'9 or something and narrow shouldered, but he had this incredible, incredible presence that was really, truly intimidating. And because he didn't say a lot of, like, he didn't say He wouldn't do chit chat. He hated chit chat. Anytime he spoke, it had to be something really big, something really important. And so we were always kind of tiptoeing around that in our house which was a really hard way to to live. And as I got older, it became clear to me that my parents were not in a happy marriage. My parents both drank a lot. Probably my father was an alcoholic, but it wasn't, that's not how it was framed when I was growing up. It was more like alcohol is like the, the thing you do as a business person, like in social situations, you know? But my mother, Definitely was an alcoholic. And as I got closer and closer to kind of college age, her alcoholism got worse, their marriage got worse, the climate in the house got worse. And all of that was punctuated by the fact that I had this boyfriend. That my father did not approve of and really in retrospect, my father was right about my boyfriend, but you know, I don't know if you've had this experience, but when you're like 17 and you're, you know, there's that like, yeah. So it was a, it was a very tense kind of time and I ended up going to college where my boyfriend was. My father, you know, continued to disapprove of him, and there were conflicts, verbal conflicts. There was once a physical conflict between them, which was upsetting. And I felt very pulled between the two of them. And in my junior year of college. So I was, my parents were divorced by this time and my father was living in Westchester County, New York, which is where also where I was going to college. So we were we got to see each other kind of a lot. We would have lunch together weekly. And it was actually a wonderful part of our relationship that I, that I treasure thinking about with those like weekly lunch dates, meeting up with him and kind of starting to get to know him as an adult. That year was also the year that my obedience and compliance started to kind of fray. I was becoming more politically Not I won't say like activist, I was not an activist, but I was more politically aware. My parents were very conservative, they were probably registered Republicans and I was going in a different direction. And so this, this sort of strain on our relationship had to do somewhat with that and then also this boyfriend who's floating around. And in the year leading up to his death, and I, it's an important year because it's the only time in our relationship where we were absolutely estranged from each other, and there were a number of things that happened in the fall, including him kind of scheduling me an interview to be a waitress at a, at a bar that he liked without telling me and like sort of calling me up and being like, you have an interview on Wednesday at, at nine. I'm like, I have a job already. I'm like, you know, so it was that, that kind of boundary crossing.

Mandy: 6:56

And I, I mean, at that, at that age, it's so important for children to, as they're transitioning into adulthood, to find that independence and to, to create who they are on their own, separate from their parents. And so I think it's a very common sense of strain and in relationships with parents that sometimes parents can't let go yet, or they want more control than they have.

Sheila: 7:19

Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly, that's absolutely what it is. And now, like, with all this hindsight and time, I can say, Oh, that was, that was like the way it was supposed to go. Right. It was natural. But at the time it felt terrible. It felt, you know, it felt like like it felt like a loss, like I was losing this connection to him. And. By the time the new year came around, I was so angry with him for a variety of things. That was one of them, but just sort of generally, I was angry with him and I was tired of being like in my head. I was like, I'm the only one who ever like extends myself in this relationship. I mean, it's ridiculous. You don't have a relationship with your 19 really, right? But I thought I deserved that. Yeah. And so in the new year, right around January 1st, I sent him this letter. This letter that was like, it outlined all the reasons I was angry with him. And it used the F word a bunch of times. And I'll tell you why that's relevant in a minute, but I was really angry and I was in my mind, I was like, I want, I want to express myself and I want respect back. And I want you to, I want to hear that you love me. I need to, I need this from you. I expect it. I deserve it. And I sent it and I heard nothing, I heard nothing, nothing happened you know, January leaves, February goes, you know, maybe it's March and I don't know, I'm still sitting around wondering like, is he going to respond to me? What's going to happen? At one point, I think it was spring break. I was home at my mother's house. And He called and I answered the phone. And when he realized it was me, he hung up. Oh no. Yeah, it was very, he was very stubborn, you know, and very like dug in on this. And then June came and that's Father's Day. Right. And I was like, Okay, it's Father's Day. Sheila, you can't ignore this. You need to send him something. And I sent him something and I still didn't hear anything from him. God, he was stubborn. So it was, it was a painful year. It was a really like, like trial by fire for my emotional and my, my sense of identity and all that. And by the time late July rolled around I was just like, am I ever going to talk with him again? I don't, I don't know what's going to happen here, you know? And one morning, I don't know what the date was, but again, like late July is the timeline. I got a phone call from my sister early in the morning and she said, dad's sick. You need to come. We're at the hospital. So he'd been not well, like, you know, he didn't take care of himself physically. He was diabetic. Like he had been diagnosed like at 40 or something with one. I don't know. He was, he was like an insulin dependent diabetic that like he was hiding butter cookies under his bed eating, you know, He was a heavy smoker he ate and drank and did whatever the heck he wanted and had had a heart attack also the previous year. So he was not well. So immediately when I heard that he was sick, I thought it had something to do with either of those two things. And so I threw my clothes on and drove to the hospital. He was in Danbury Hospital, which is a Western Connecticut hospital. And I drove there and, I was on the phone with my sister trying to get information and it seemed like He had had a stroke. That's what they had originally thought because he had lost. He like, what is the when you can't speak? Yeah. So when I got to the ICU or the emergency room, I guess, and he was there, I went in to see him. And again, this is the first time I see I've seen him in almost a full year. And. I, I'm like trying to talk with him and he's so angry. He's like red faced and just trying to speak and he's yelling at me and I can't understand him because it's that speech you know, impediment. And I finally realized that what he's yelling at me about is the letter. The letter that I sent him that, you know, and I'm saying to him, dad, I love, I love you. And he was like, you know, it didn't sound like that in this letter and so angry about the letter. And I thought, this is crazy. You are in a hospital bed, you're hooked up to these wires. What's happening? And you're yelling at me about a letter.

Mandy: 11:36

Anyway, well, it just shows how much, how much that stuck with him and how much it meant to him. Like it did have an impact. It's not like he got it and threw it in the garbage. You know,

Sheila: 11:46

later I'll jump ahead just a second to tell you, like later after he passed away, my mother and I went to his office to clean out. You know, his stuff and she found his briefcase, which included all sorts of like, you know, important documents, including the letter, which he had circled with a red pen, all of the F words. I don't know. I, you know, I have kids now myself. And so I think about what, what that must've felt like for him. Anyway, the letter. And I remember saying to him in the, the emergency room, like, dad, like, chill. We'll talk about it later. I love you. We have, we'll have all this time to talk about it. And of course, that's the, that's the irony is that we did not have all this time to talk about it. And he was moved into He was moved into ICU, I think, right from the ER. Again, they were still thinking stroke, but then as the, you know, as the early days kept going, they started to decide, they decided it wasn't, hadn't been a stroke at all. And he was, he had some swelling in his brain and they thought that that was what. Was causing this aphasia. Is that what the term is? I think. Yeah. And so we were waiting for antibiotics that they were pumping him through antibiotics to clear this infection or whatever it was, and nothing was touching it. And he was getting he wasn't getting any better. And he wasn't getting any worse exactly, but he was definitely in this place of incapacity. And so in those, again, in like the early, like the first three or four days, you know, all of the relatives come swarming in and I say all the relatives, I mean, my mom's family, she She had eight brothers and two sisters. Oh, wow. And her mother and my mom, and they're divorced, remember? So, but they'd only been divorced for a short while and they'd been married for 20 years. And so here come all of my uncles. And here come my grandparents, my father's parents were still living from Florida, and it became this like total circus in the ICU waiting room which was very difficult to kind of you know, to try to like find myself in that space and to try to feel some kind of connection to what was happening and to like the larger context of what had been happening between us. And in those first couple of days, there was not part of me that was thinking, Oh, he's going to die. Like, that hadn't gotten there yet. But it didn't take too much longer to get there so a couple, maybe five days or so, six days into it it seemed like they were going to move him to a, like a rehab floor and kind of start to get back, you know, and that was encouraging. And. The other thing that was the other stressor that was happening was that he had a girlfriend that we hadn't known about. And she was at the hospital. And so my mother was at the hospital, my girl, it was like this thing out of a soap opera. You know,

Mandy: 14:35

it was a soap

Sheila: 14:36

opera. It was dramatic. I'm laughing about it, but at the time it was really kind of horrifying. And I felt, I remember feeling really angry that there was all this drama around it when I just wanted to kind of focus on my father and. It seemed really serious to me, whether I thought it was going to be fatal or not, it was serious. It was, it was this big life change for him. And anyway, at the same, same time, remember my, my boyfriend, who he hates is kind of floating around in the background, not coming into this room, but driving me to the hospital, all this. So the day that I was, I was leaving the hospital and I went over to him and I said, dad, I'm going to go. And I'll see you tomorrow. I love you. And he grabbed my hand, which was completely uncharacteristic of him. And he was crying, which was also completely uncharacteristic. And he said, I love you, which was a third totally out of like, my father just didn't say those things. If I said, dad, I love you, he would say me too. That was his stock answer. And this time he said it back. While he was crying and I was sort of undone, I thought, what is happening? So I went home and I got a call again early the next morning that he'd gone into a coma overnight. It's almost like he knew, you know, it feels like he knew a lot like the briefcase I mentioned before he, all of his like important documents were in it. Like as if he knew something was going to happen and my mother told us later that they had had a conversation they were having a not a super contentious divorce sort of thing but not super happy either you know, but he had told her I feel like something's gonna happen. Wow. I did. So what happened in the next, he was, he was in the hospital. It was 10 days from the first phone call from my sister that he was sick to his, to his death. And what we learned in the interim and those like, you know, after he fell into a coma was that the infection that he had was not, it was never bacterial. It was always viral. And so they tried to, and this was 1992. And so, you know, medicine, whatever it's. Yeah, 30 years ago. So it's different, right? And so some resident was, was the one that was like, I wonder if it's viral, but it was too late. You know, they were, they gave him the antiviral stuff, but it didn't work. And he never woke up from that. We had to make the decision to disconnect his life support you know, at like day nine. And it was surreal. It was just surreal. And again, like all of these uncles of mine, and they're my mom's brothers. They're like these raucous Irish funny guys like coming in and trying to make you feel better, which was, that's of course what you would do right but at the time it felt like I'm, I'm actually in the circus. And so we made the decision to, to disconnect, and I remember that. This was, it was like the afternoon of the day before and we knew it was going to happen the next morning. And so I went into his room with him. Just, it was just me and him, the night before, and I talked with him. I don't, you know, I have no idea if he could hear me. The doctors were like, we don't know. But I said, you know, the things that you say as a daughter when your father's about to die. I told him how much I loved him, and I did. And then I decided the next morning that I didn't want to be. in the room with him when this happened, not because I was afraid of, of the moment of death or anything like that. It had to do with, I knew it was going to be another circus. I knew that it would be stuffed with people. And I wanted, I wanted my grief to be more private than that. But I also felt like, I needed to send a representative. And so my boyfriend, which again, went for me. And I was sitting out in the, you know, the, the lobby right outside of like the doors to the ICU. I remember sitting there with a cup of tea in my hands, like scalding hot tea and the doors opened and outcome all of the people. And it was in that room was my mother, my sister, my three grandparents. At least three cousins you know, uncles, aunts, the girlfriend was probably there, I don't remember, but it was like, not me though, and my boyfriend anyway, when everybody came out and they had told us, you know, I don't, we don't know, once we turn off the machines, we don't know how long he'll have, and he didn't have anything, and he died immediately, but I don't know. You know, it was this moment of like, okay, this is the next part of my life about to start. And this was right before my senior year of college started. It was August, he died in August sixth. And, you know, I started school on like August 28th or something like that. And I, and I thinking back now, I'm like, why did I go back to school that semester? Why didn't I take some time to grieve? But I didn't, I went to school. And all I could talk about was this. All I could talk about. I wanted to talk about every single detail of the death. Yes. All the 10 days. And honestly, Amanda, this is, talking with you right now, recounting it, is the first time I've done this, in this kind of detail, for a really long time. But back then, I had this sense that as long as I could keep all of the minor, the minute details Like, with me and in me, then I wouldn't lose him.

Mandy: 19:53

You know, it's so interesting that you say you wanted to like go over that whole time over and over again. I had a very similar experience with my mom's death where I wanted to like, I could have talked about that day every single day and just like where I was standing, the words that were said. Right. Right. All of these details and people don't necessarily want to hear that.

Sheila: 20:17

Right, right. They don't. They don't. I remember telling, saying this exact thing to this wonderful professor who was my poetry professor. He was like my mentor. He was also, you know, he was one of those professors that kind of like just holds you through your time. And he did that for me. And I remember talking with him about this and he said to me, Sheila, people think death is catching. It's They think they're going to catch it from you and that is why they don't want they think you're walking around like a neon sign that says death, you know, and that's why you have to find the people who have been through it. And, you know, I was, I was 19. I was 12. I was 19. I was 21 when he died. My sister was 19. I didn't know anybody who had lost a parent at that point.

Mandy: 20:59

Right. And your friends are 21 and wanting to get, get drunk and go out to the bars

Sheila: 21:03

and Right, right. Exactly. And so, and and here I am this like all I was already a poet, like predisposed to writing sad poems, you know? And now all of a sudden I'm writing really sad poems. Yeah. Really, really sad poems. In fact, I was a senior and I was a creative writing major and I was an honors student and this professor I just mentioned was my thesis director and he said, you need to write about this. You need to, this needs to be your thesis. My thesis was going to be a chapbook of poetry and I wrote a chapbook of poetry about those 10 days. And like now as a professor myself, I would never, I don't think I would ever recommend a student. Immerse themselves that deeply into their grief that that close in terms of like time, but it is I think what I needed to do. So that's what I did. And I talked about it where I could, but I wrote about it mostly.

Mandy: 21:56

And it's almost like because you didn't have the outlet to talk about it enough to satiate that need that you were able to just transfer that energy and write about it. I

Sheila: 22:06

think so. I think that's true. And I think the other, the other part of it is that because we had such a kind of a dysfunctional family life my sister and I. Had a very different relation, different reactions to his death. She was actually living with him at the time that he died. So and it was the only time, like, just like it had been the year before he died was the only time he and I had been estranged. The year before he died was the only time she and he had not been in some kind of like battle. And I'm so glad she had that actually, like thinking back. That's, that's such a gift that she had that but I didn't feel like I could talk with my mother about it because it was so, it was such a weird thing for her because she loved him so much and he didn't love her back and they spent all these years together. And then he had this girlfriend who had like, it turned out that he had been, you know, with this girlfriend when they were married, like just all of this ugly, emotional. junk that I was afraid to talk with her about it. Plus she was drinking a lot and her life was spiraling out this other way. And our relationship was also suddenly very, very stressed. So, so yeah, I, I talked about it with the few people that I could. And of course my boyfriend hated him and he hated my, my, and I, spoiler alert, I married the guy. Oh, and then divorced later. But My dad was not wrong. Yeah, I started writing. I mean, that's all I could do. I think I've always, that's all I've always done is sort of write to work things out, you know? And

Mandy: 23:35

that comes up with the letter, right? I mean, that's why you wrote to your dad because, right? I do believe, I think some people process things through talking and some people process things through writing. I'm definitely the writing processor more than the talking. Yeah,

Sheila: 23:50

I am too. I, and at that time in my life, especially, you know, this boyfriend I've mentioned a few times already was very good at talking. He was very good at talking circles. He was very argumentative. He was also very smart, but manipulative in ways that were, you know, kept me quiet. And I would feel, I remember like when we would fight, I would feel like I couldn't match him. In terms of, you know, logical argumentation, I would get flustered very fast because of emotions, you know, and so that was the same thing with my dad, I was always, it was always such a measure of like my being intimidated by him and worried that he wasn't going to prove of me that it was hard to be honest with him. about whatever was happening. There were a few, moments in our relationship that stand out as being kind of anomalous in that way, where he did somehow seem to understand who I was but they were few and far between, really. I mean, I, I never, I never didn't think he loved me. I knew that he did. But it was, he was a hard man to know, you know, he was not hard to love for me, even though he was, he was, you know, he had deep, deep, you know, he was deeply flawed like we all are. So, a couple of years ago, you probably know about this, I don't remember when this was, I remember reading articles about something called, you're going to, you're going to know this better than I am, extended grief syndrome or something or persistent grief.

Mandy: 25:16

Yeah. Persistent or complicated grief. Right.

Sheila: 25:19

And I remember reading that and I'm like, Oh my God, this explains so much because I, the grief that I felt about my father absolutely shaped who I was. All through my twenties into my thirties and beyond to the point where like, I couldn't talk about him without crying. I couldn't look at pictures of him without going right back to that, that moment, like just feeling it so viscerally. And it never occurred to me that that wasn't normal or that that wasn't, you know, that not everybody experienced it that way. And I know that it's a, it's a, a spectrum of experience, whatever. But suddenly that a couple of years ago, I was like, oh. You know, that is, it is, I wonder why I felt it so strongly. And I think it's an easy, an easy thing to point to, like all of the things I've told you about the complications of our relationship. Plus the fact that I was right on the cusp of adulthood when he died. You know, I was just about to be my own full self and I lost him and he was young and it was clear. I mean, he was 46. And so like that part of it too made everything so much more dramatic, you know? Yeah. So it's just, it was just this outsized thing.

Mandy: 26:29

Yeah, I was 26. When my mom died and she was 47. So, so, you know, similar ages. And I think I had a very similar experience where it, it defined who I was. It totally changed the trajectory of my life and who I am today. And, and I think grief in, in many ways does that for everyone to some degree, but I do think in young adulthood, because of that transition period, and when you're trying to find yourself and, and define who you are when something like that happens. Takes hold and kind of doesn't let go. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned, you know, you wrote poetry about it when Things happened, but you and I've heard this. Obviously I'm, I'm a writer also. And I know that everyone says you need distance from the event before you really dig into writing about it. So at what point in your life did you decide I want to write a memoir about this and how did you come to

Sheila: 27:29

shape it? Yeah, great question. So yes, I, I was writing poetry about it right from the get go. I didn't become a memoir writer until I was in graduate school. So I got an MFA at Penn State when I was 29, like started it when I was 29. I was already married and divorced to the, to the guy I was telling you about before my father had been gone, you know, close to a decade at that point. And I was there to study poetry, but there was a a course being offered. One year in memoir writing that was like an elective and we all decided, Oh, let's try that, you know, and I'd never written extended prose in my life before. And, and suddenly found like there was this new, this new kind of form that would hold all of this grief. And I didn't just write about him, but I wrote about like the marriage, the bad marriage and all that. But what happened in that, in that class is that I wrote a piece about. It was really about my, my marriage and divorce. And after I graduated from the program, I stayed, in state college for a long time. I, I did, and then I met my, my new husband. And during that time, a friend of mine who had been in that class with me, who was also still teaching at Penn State was a reader of Glamour Magazine. I was not. And she noted this, this contest that they were calling for. It was called the story of your life. And she said, you should send that essay. about your divorce to this contest. And I was like, but I did and I won it, which was this totally like the branch, you know, like here's me as a writer. And then all of a sudden I'm going off in this direction. So one of the things that, which was a great experience, really wild and surreal to be, you know published in glamor after I had been writing these poems in little tiny literary magazines that nobody ever read anyway. When One of the parts of the, of the award for glamour was a conversation with an agent and we had this wonderful, I had this wonderful sit down with an agent who said that she appreciated my writing. She liked it. And she said, do you have an idea for a book length project? And I said, as a matter of fact, I do. And at that point, I had been thinking about obviously about my father, but about writing a. An accounting of our life, a memoir through the lens of the only thing that we shared that was. To my mind at the time, completely uncomplicated, which was food. And of course it's not uncomplicated, but he loves food. I loved, I loved to eat with him. Like at that, at the time that he was alive, I didn't have the same relationship to food that he did. He was, you know, he was a world traveler. He was very, adventurous in his eating. And I saw that really early on and thought, okay, that's how I can connect with him by, by loving that the same way he does. And then as I mentioned before, when I went to college and he was living in the same, sort of in the same region, we would meet and go for lunch together. He also had started earlier in our life before my parents were divorced. Maybe when I, when I was about 14, he started taking me out for dinner on my birthday, just him, to a very fancy schmancy place, you know, so it was like special. Anyway, I told the agent this and she said, Oh. She said, that's, that would be great. But there are not that many memoirs that are father daughter food memoirs. There are a lot of mother, daughter go write that thing. So I had just gotten married to my, my current husband and I had a wonderful opportunity to go to a writer's retreat for a month and I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote this. What I thought was going to be this memoir about our relationship through the lens of food and the meals we shared. And when I came back to the agent, she said, this is really beautiful. You've got a real facility with scene and language and all this, but it's not a memoir. It's not a, it's not like a straightforward narrative arc. And the way she explained it back then was it needs to be more novelistic. Like there needs to be one story. You know, that's not what it was. This was already how many years past his. His death and my memory memory doesn't work that way for me. So it was, it was much more like essays. So that's when it started. And I would say that was 2000. And the book just came out last week. Oh, wow. So 20 years.

Mandy: 31:40

Yeah. And for people out there who aren't well versed in writing, I mean, there are memoirs and essays. That is absolutely a genre and a thing. Was it just not at that time thought to be,

Sheila: 31:53

I guess, I guess not. I guess not. And it. It was, you know, obviously disheartening because here you think you have like, this is it, this is going to be the thing that puts me on the map as a writer or whatever. Yeah, I

Mandy: 32:03

do think I already have an agent or I already have, you know, Like

Sheila: 32:06

I felt so I felt so like completely fortunate and lucky and all these things. And and then when it didn't work, I felt like, oh, I've squandered my only chance to, to sell this thing. And for, so for the next like long time, I. Tried to do what she wanted and other, I also started querying other agents who gave me basically the same response she had that they couldn't sell it. I didn't have any kind of like platform. I'm not famous, you know, whatever. So I struggled and struggled I tried to force it into this form that they had asked for and then finally realized it's not going to happen. I am still a nonfiction writer it turns out I still love writing. Memoir, short memoir essays about my life. And of course, you know, 20 years, I lost my father at the beginning of it, but in the middle I got married, divorced, married again. I have two children. I became a professor, like my whole life kept going, you know? And so I kept writing about my life because that's just what I do. And I. I realized, okay, well, maybe this is not a memoir. Maybe it's a collection of essays that is about more than just my father and our relationship through food. It certainly is like, that's kind of the heart of it, but there's all this other stuff to talk about too, especially my son. My son is, he's just turned 18 but I've been cooking with him since he was about nine years old. He has that thing that I have that my father has. He's like the continuation of it. And so cooking and eating with my son has been a really interesting. Process in light of all of everything that has come before. So that has given me a lot to write about and think about to anyway, so I, I realized it was a collection. I tried to sell it as a collection and struggled with that as well until I found the Small Publisher Clash Books back in 2020 is when I think they took the book. And I was shocked. I was at the moment of like, okay, this is just, it's going to be a project that I have to put away and just say I wrote it and it's over and move on to the next thing. I was just about there when they took the book. And it took a couple of years to come out because they You know, because publishing is long, but also because they shifted their publishing model and got a distributor, a national distributor, which was so much better for me. So it took a little while longer than I, than we expected at first. But, but it's here in the world now.

Mandy: 34:32

Wow. What a journey to get there.

Sheila: 34:35

Yeah, it's wild. It's wild. So I'm very grateful to them they're a publisher that really like they kind of go to the beat of their own drum. They publish whatever they want. There's no real like, they have a kind of a niche that kind of, they publish really edgy stuff, horror, things like that. But they also have a, a dog, like a cookbook for dog treats. And they have my book, which is, you know, a lit much more literary kind of thing. But I like that about them. They're like, we just publish what we like. So that's awesome. Yeah, it is.

Mandy: 35:09

It is. So for listeners, I I've seen the cover of your book. I have your book, but I have not yet read your book. Admittedly, I have only read the first chapter, but it is amazing. So I'd love for people to, you can share the name and I will definitely in the links, I will have links to the name of your book, your website, everywhere that people can find you. And also I'd love to link the lit hub article so that people can get a taste for what the book is like. Cause I really think once they. Read that first chapter. They're going to want to read the whole thing. So yes, what is the name of the book? The

Sheila: 35:44

book is called all things edible, random and odd essays on grief, love and food. And I can tell you, I hope this is okay to say if you know, there's a book that came out a couple of years ago that was very, very popular for very good reason called crying in H Mart. Yes. Do you know this book? Mm hmm. Michelle's Honor. Let me tell you the funny, I don't know what to call this. It's not exactly a coincidence, but it's an interesting little tidbit. I'll start by saying if you liked that book, I think you'll like my book too because the thing that they, that the both books share is a central focus on a parent child relationship, a troubled parent child relationship, and the way that they connect through food. In Zahner's book, it's, it's her mother who is dying of cancer and it's the way they cook they cook food together from her mother's, you know, from, from their culture. And with mine, it's my father, as I've mentioned. But the funny thing is that I was reading, I actually taught Crying in H Mart to a graduate food writing class. At Chatham University where I teach a couple years ago, and I had not read the book before. I knew I wanted to, but I hadn't read it. And my book was already under contract and I'm reading Michelle's book and it's amazing and I'm crying and everybody's crying and it's just great. And then I get to like the last chapter of it and I learn that Michelle's Honor won the same glamor contest that I won. No really. I was the first I won it. The, I won it the first time they ever offered it. And then she won it in like 2019 or sport 18 or 19 and crying in H Mart. I, it came directly from the essay that won that. That contest, which is just feels like what? Yeah. That's wild. Yeah. Yeah. So hers is much more like what my agent wanted. Right? Hers is much more of like the novelistic story. But I do think that they have their sort of cousins. And you know, I love it if maybe I can send her a copy someday that she would read it, but, you know, she's a rock star. So who knows?

Mandy: 37:40

That's incredible. I love that story. You should tell her the story and then

Sheila: 37:44

I would love to, I, actually, I had hoped that maybe she would blurb the book, but you know, again, she really is a rock star. She's a, she's a musician. So but there was no doing that, but maybe I can send her a gift copy and just say, Hey, you know, When you're in between your tours, maybe you want to crack, crack this open and have a look, but. Wow. Yeah. It's nice. It's good to be in, in night. It's like, it really feels good to be able to point to a wonderful book that I really did genuinely love and say, my book is a little like this.

Mandy: 38:10

So. That's incredible. And it helps that I'm sure a lot of listeners know that book. So. Yeah, I'm really excited for you. I'm, I think that just by reading what I've read of you, I think that you have a real gift for the way you say things. I actually wanted to end things with a quote that is actually quoted in your Lit Hub article, but you said, I write because I want to continue my father, not contain him. And I, I just think that's so beautiful. And often I talk with guests here and we talk about different ways that they have processed their grief or move through their grief and writing obviously as an outlet for many people. And sometimes people don't even realize how healing it can be. And I love this idea of continuing our loved ones through our writing and

Sheila: 38:59

it's beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. I also, I think I want to say one thing to writers out there My experience, you know, was many times in my writing life between that moment of loss and now I have said to myself, Oh my gosh, like, am I ever going to write anything other than this? And I had this fear that I was I don't know, you know, kind of like in a rut or no one wants to hear these stories or, you know, et cetera. And it wasn't until fairly recently, maybe with the book, this book's acceptance where I realized it is fine to keep writing about this. Of course, I'm going to keep writing about this. What is more, what's more formative than your relationship with your parents? And I will, I will write about this for the rest of my life. And so if you're out there and you're writing about. You know, your own loss and you're feeling the way that I did just stay in it. Know that it's valuable. You know, this is such a human thing that we, unfortunately, we all share this. We're all going to lose someone at some point. And all of our stories about how to manage that and cope with it and make a life from it are so important to hear and share. So. I love that

Mandy: 40:15

advice. I, I've definitely been in that headspace before, where you think people are so sick of seeing articles and stories about loss and grief and, you know, the experiences that we've had, but I, I love that advice.

Sheila: 40:29

There's very little that's more human and that connects us more, you know, concretely.

Mandy: 40:33

One of the quotes that I, admire Cheryl Strayed for, she is very open about saying my mother was the love of my life. And I remember when I read that and when I've heard her say that, just feeling like, I don't know that I was brave enough to put that out there just for fear of judgment of others, even though it resonated so much with me. Yeah. And so. Yeah, I think it's the same thing. We're like accepting that. Yeah, this is what I want to say to the world and that's okay. And there are people to listen to it and it can be around the same themes.

Sheila: 41:09

Yeah. Yeah. The last essay in the book is about my mother's death. Which happened very recently. She died in 2021, right after the book was accepted and as I mentioned before, she had been an active alcoholic. Our, our relationship was tremendously strained, but When she died of cancer in 2021, she had had 14 years of sobriety through AA, and our relationship had been, you know, transformed through that. And when she died, it was, it was painful, but it was not the same kind of devastation, partly because my mother lived a lot longer than my father did. So there wasn't the tragedy of, oh, she's so young. She was, but she was 72. But the difference I think for me is that we got to live out our story together. We got to stay in it and fight it out and grow and love each other through, you know, all these different moments in our lives. And so I, there are no question marks left in my mother, my life with my mother, my relationship with my mother. It's just pure feeling of. I loved her and I miss her. It's not the same as, as it was with my father. And I'm actually very grateful that I have now these two very different experiences of grief. And so all that just to say that the experience, that's a spectrum of, of experience, you know? Yeah. And I'm glad that I was able to, I'm sorry my mother died before seeing this book, but I'm very glad that I was able to, to include her.

42:43

Every episode and interview on the podcast is special to me, but some just strike me a little different. Sheila's has been one of those for me, maybe because everyone has memories of food that reminds us of our loved ones. And she's found a way to extract those in her book. Or maybe it's just the simple fact that our parents were similar ages when they passed. And we both went on to write about it. But whatever it was, I hope you found pieces of her story that resonated with you as well. Check the show notes to read an article with an excerpt of her book and to find links where you can purchase a copy of your own. For today's journal prompt, write about a meal or a specific food that reminds you of your person. The taste, the smell, the memory, it conjures, whatever it brings up for you. Like Elise, let the writing lead you in whatever direction it takes. Thank you so much for listening, please make sure you subscribe, share this episode with anyone who could benefit from it. And as always. Does it remember grams? Anytime you need to send a little love to someone who is grieving. Thank you and have a wonderful day.