For the Ones We've Lost: How I Honor Them at My Table

For the Ones We’ve Lost

How I honor them at my table

This one is hard to write, so I’ll just write it honestly. I’ve lost people I love to cancer. My favorite aunt, to breast and bone cancer. My brother-in-law, to colon cancer — I watched him fight with everything he had, through round after round of treatment, and still lose. Several of my best friends growing up have fought cancer, and one died quickly 6 weeks after diagnosis. If you’ve sat in a hospital room like that, or waited by a phone for news like that, you already know there aren’t really words. There’s just the ache, and the love that has nowhere to go. I've traveled from CA to TX to NY attending cancer summits, conferences and purchasing 1000's of dollars worth of training from the so called "experts". Hearing stories from across the country and around the world of the battles going on links my heart to the fight and gives me a strong desire to "prevent" with all that I have in my power to do so. 

I want to say plainly: they were brave. They fought hard, they trusted their doctors, and none of what I write here is a second-guess of a single choice they made. Grief has a way of hunting for someone or something to blame, and I’ve had to learn — gently, over years — that this is not that. This is something quieter. This is about what I do with the love that’s left over.

Because here’s what I’ve found: the anger of loss can eat you alive, or it can be turned into something tender. For me, it turned into the way I feed and care for the people still sitting at my table. I can’t change what happened to my aunt or my brother-in-law, or my best friends. But I can pour my love for them into how I raise my own family — and that has become my quiet way of carrying them with me.

Grief is just love with nowhere to go. So I give it somewhere to go — into a table full of real food and the people I’d do anything for.

This is what that looks like in our home. None of it is fancy, and none of it is a magic shield. It’s simply how I choose, day by day, to take good care of the ones I still get to hold:

I support our local farmers and buy fresh, local, organic food when I can. (Thank you, Real Foods Market. - now Redmond Heritage Farm) When local isn’t available, I fill in at the health food store.

I keep our home stocked with real, whole food — a freezer full of fruits and vegetables, a counter full of fresh ones, and a pantry of nuts, seeds, beans, grains, spices, and good oils. We lean toward eating to truly nourish.

I make sure our water is clean, and that we soak up a little real sunshine.

We move our bodies together — and yes, we love kicking off our shoes and standing barefoot in the grass, just for the simple joy of it.

My kids know to go outside early and to get, "sunshine on their eye balls" (to stop the production of melatonin) and to awake 1000's of other amazing things in their bodies. 

I teach my kids why real food matters, so that caring for their bodies becomes something they carry into their own homes someday.

And I take responsibility — for my health, and for helping my family thrive — as an act of love, not fear.

All of this is wonderful, and worth doing, and I believe in it with my whole heart. But it is not a guarantee, and it is not a cure. Good, careful people who do everything “right” still get sick sometimes — that is one of the hardest truths there is, and it means my aunt and my brother-in-law, and my friends did nothing to deserve what happened to them. So please don’t hear any of this as blame, or as a reason to ever turn away from good medical care. Caring for your body with real food and doctors who love you aren’t rivals; they walk side by side. If illness ever visits your home, I pray you’ll reach for both — good medicine and good food, faith and a fighting team of professionals — and never feel you have to choose.

So this is how I remember them. Not with bitterness, but with carrots and berries and bare feet in the grass and kids who know they’re loved. Every good meal I set down is a small, quiet tribute — a way of saying, I remember you, and I’m taking care of the ones you’d have wanted me to take care of. That’s my walk. That’s my run. That’s how I carry them.

And I hold tight to the hope that this ache isn’t the end of the story — that one day the table will be full again, with every last one of us there.

“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying…” — Revelation 21:4

With much love, and in loving memory,

Steffanie

A caring note: I’m a wellness educator and a mom sharing my heart and my experience — not a doctor, and nothing here is medical advice. A healthy lifestyle supports wellbeing and is a beautiful gift to your body, but it is not a treatment, cure, or guarantee against cancer or any disease, and it is never a substitute for professional medical care. If you or someone you love is facing a diagnosis, please work closely with qualified doctors. If you’re grieving, please be gentle with yourself, and reach out to people who can hold that weight with you. You are not alone.