I made my traditional cranberry-orange relish for Thanksgiving. The recipe (if you can call it that) is insanely simple:
2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries,washed and picked over
1 navel orange, washed and cut into eighths (leave the peel on)
1 cup sugar
Buzz the cranberries and orange pieces in the food processor fitted with the metal blade until finely ground. Dump fruit into a bowl and stir in sugar. Let sit until dinnertime.
This year I skipped the sugar and added a little maple syrup. But not any maple syrup: I used some of the last batch boiled by my brother-in-law, Stan. I wrote about him in this post from last year. Sadly, Stan died in July from an extremely aggressive cancer that laughed at anything the docs threw at it. The relish was my little way of being thankful for this good man on the holiday, as is the following remembrance.
My sister Terry and Stan met in 1977 and married in 1981. They raised two amazing kids, Randy and Dana. Stan was a participatory parent, doing everything from changing diapers to taking them to doctor’s appointments. Stan taught Randy to hunt, but it took a little time for the youngster to catch on to the need for stealth in the field. The first time Stan took Randy out to his deer perch on my mother’s property, Randy started calling: “Here deer! Here deer!” About 20 years ago Stan took up golf and attempted to get the kids interested in the sport. This was a hard sell for my niece. When I would call Terry, Dana would tell me that her father was watching “stupidgolf” on TV.
Stan was frugal (Terry called him cheap when they first met), but he had some extravagant episodes. In Mike Tyson’s heyday, Stan would watch pay-per-view boxing matches. Since “Iron Mike” usually vanquished his opponents early in the first round, I calculated Stan spent about $1 per second for the privilege of watching these spectacles. Several years ago Stan and Terry paid for the clan (Randy and his now-wife; Dana, her husband, and their daughter) to Orlando for the week. Their granddaughter got the full Disney treatment. When their grandson turned two in January, Stan and Terry got him a cart and track set up. Dana sent me a video of the helmet-clad tyke going down the track to crash into a cardboard wall at the far end of the kitchen.
Shortly after I received that video, Terry called me at work to tell me that Stan had been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. That means the primary tumor has spread to distant areas of the body. Despite the pessimistic prognosis, Stan wanted to buy time with radiation and chemotherapy. He and Randy took a road trip to Ohio State for a second opinion on the treatment plan. (Stan’s sister is a breast cancer survivor and received her care at Ohio State.) Shortly after they returned from Columbus, Terry noticed some slurred speech and called 911. One of the far-flung tumors had caused bleeding on the surface of his brain. Dana texted me about her dad’s hospitalization later that morning. One of my officemates asked how long they’d been married: As it happened, Stan went into the hospital on their 35th wedding anniversary. He subsequently had radiation for the brain metastases, and underwent a few bouts of chemotherapy to attempt to shrink the other tumors. Neither strategy was of much use.
Stan maintained a sense of humor as the cancer and treatments took their toll. When he lost his hair, he started imitating Gollum from The Lord of the Rings movies. One day when I called Terry, he piped up from the peanut gallery: “Tell Cindy I’m naked in the living room.” He apparently got overheated during the night, and Terry helped him out of his pajamas. Friends, hunting buddies, and former coworkers visited to swap stories. Two days after the hospice nurse came to do an initial assessment, Stan died at home with Terry and the kids at his side.
Yesterday when I called east for Thanksgiving, I learned that Dana’s husband had bagged a deer, and that Randy cut up the meat. Stan used to do the butchering with help from Randy, but this year Randy did it himself. The family gathered for Thanksgiving dinner at the house built on the property where the sugar maples were tapped for my jug of syrup. Even though Stan was not physically present at their feast or ours, he was in spirit and memory.
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