The Recipe Book

There are some rooms in hospice that feel a little extra full, not just with people, but with laughter and life. That was the case with one patient we cared for – I’ll call her Sarah.

Sarah was rarely alone. Her daughters were always around, and together, they were just…joyful. The kind of joy that comes from deep love and years of inside jokes. You’d hear them laughing and teasing each other – the kind of teasing that only works when you really know each other’s hearts.

So many of their stories together centered around food. More specifically, Sarah’s baking. She was known for it. Holidays, birthdays, Sunday momings, her donuts, cookies, and breads were the centerpiece. I remember hearing them laugh about how she’d spend hours in the kitchen baking… and how everything would disappear minutes later. And somehow, no one ever knew what happened to the first dozen cookies.

They talked about this old family recipe book she had, handwritten, passed down, well-loved. I told them I’d love to see it sometime. A few days later, one of her daughters brought it in… and it was magic. This cookbook had been through life, you could tell. The pages were soft and wrinkled from use. There were oil stains, smudges of batter, and vanilla spots everywhere. Some of the pages looked like they might crumble if you breathed too hard on them. And the best part? Sarah had written notes next to certain recipes, things hke ‘yum’ or ‘yum yum, so good!Honestly, it was one of the most beautiful cookbooks I’ve ever seen. Not because it was perfect, but because it was loved.

We decided to bake together one afternoon. Downstairs in our family kitchen, we made her gingersnaps, one of her favourites. And that afternoon was…special. We laughed. We taste-tested molasses. I learned that ‘measuring with the heart’ is a real thing. It was one of those moments where the room just felt full in all the right ways.

Later on, I wanted to create something special for the family – something to honour that recipe book and all the memories inside it. So I asked one of her daughters what recipe meant the most to her, and she said, ‘the donuts’, of course. I took that recipe, kept it in Sarah’s handwriting, and made it into a little piece of wall art for the family. A way to keep part of her – and those sweet, messy, joy-filled moments – close.

Love is in the laughter, the flour-dusted pages, and the donuts that disappear before they even cool.
Every patient has a story. Thank you for letting us be part of theirs.