27/10/2025
Tea & cake with Grandma - a 'dumb supper' Samhain tradition
"I've made parkin, Grandma, your recipe, but it's never as good as when you made it," I tell the empty chair next to me.
"It looks good to me!" she says and cuts a generous slice.
Except, she's not physically there of course. Only in the sense that her DNA is linked to mine; I am physically here because she once lived. And, as mum reminded me, because she made very good cakes "that's why I got with your Dad... because of Alice's cakes."
Have you heard of a dumb supper? It's a Samhain (the original Halloween, a major festival in the Pagan calendar) tradition where you have a silent meal to honour your deceased ancestors, laying out places for them at the table. It is said that the veil between worlds is thin at Samhain, and so it is easier to communicate with the departed.
My version is tea and cake with Grandma. I make bonfire night parkin by her recipe. I recall memories of her and feel the love she showed me, alive in me still, many years after her death. I imagine her slipping the dog a piece of cake beneath the table. I feel the sadness of loss and the gratitude of having had the sweetness of a loving Grandma in my life.
It's ok, you know, to shed some tears for relatives, and friends, who died long ago. The ones you knew and even the ones you didn't. It honours them.
It's healthy, you know, to think occasionally of death. The human struggle of being consciously mortal. It makes you appreciate life and see it as a gift.
"Mmm," says Grandma as she takes a big bite of cake, and she tells me, as she has done many times before, "a little bit of what you fancy does you good!"
🫖🍰🧓🏻❤️❤️🍰🧓🏻❤️🫖🍰🧓🏻❤️
Photo 2 shows me and my grandma on Christmas day, early 90s. On her lap is my rabbit, my first pet, who I named Alice after her.
🫖🍰🧓🏻❤️🫖🍰🧓🏻❤️🫖🍰🧓🏻❤️
