Back in January, I wrote a short post called “Taking a Moment, With Gratitude.” I said things close to home had been taking more out of me than usual, and that I wasn’t ready to say more than that. I want to finish that story now.
Some of you have been here long enough to remember 2022, when we sold our house and spent over a year in temporary housing without the equipment to film. That stretch eventually ended, but the years after it did not get easier the way I hoped. Not long after we finally settled into our new home, my mother was diagnosed with dementia.
We were very lucky, though, that my parents got to see that new house at all. My sister and brother-in-law made the trip all the way from the Netherlands with both of them for the holidays, and even with my mom’s decline already underway, she had a lot of good moments while she was here. I’m grateful for that more than I can really put into words.
For a long time the decline was gradual. Then, near the end, it moved fast. She passed away in September 2025.
I didn’t write about it at the time because I genuinely could not find the words, and because I wasn’t ready to make her illness, or her death, into content. Then, within weeks of losing her, we learned my father was sick too. Aggressive cancer, already spread to his bones. After he spent time in and out of the hospital, in more pain than anyone should have to be in, he moved into hospice care.
We flew back and forth as much as we could. There were good days mixed in with the hard ones, days where he was cracking jokes and seemed like himself again, which made it even harder when things turned. He passed away in May of this year.
We just got back from the Netherlands, where we said our goodbyes and helped my sister begin the work of closing out our parents’ apartment. That is the part of the story I wasn’t ready to tell in January, and I’m only telling it now because I didn’t want to come back to posting recipes without being honest about where we’ve been.
I’m not going to pretend everything is back to normal, because it isn’t. But I am ready to start cooking again, and we’re aiming to be back on our regular every-two-week schedule later this summer.
Thank you for the patience, the kind comments, and for sticking around even through a post as vague as the one in January. It mattered more than you probably know.
Toine
