My great-grandmother, who was from the old country, spent the last few years of her life in a nursing home.
This accommodation, combined with the problems associated with having lived well into her 90s, did not always sit well with her. One day, she announced that she had had enough.
“I’m going to end it all,” she said. “I’m going to go downstairs and eat the borscht.”
She was joking, and I personally find it hilarious. But I have been remembering this long-ago episode as I find myself contemplating the relationship between food and death.
As former French president Francois Mitterrand was dying of prostate cancer, he decided to go out on his own terms, with the best meal he could possibly have. The highlight of the dinner, which also included oysters, foie gras and capons, was roasted ortolan bunting.
The ortolan, as it is usually known, is a small songbird that migrates from Europe to Africa. It is reputed to be the best-tasting food known to man.
It is also endangered, and is illegal to eat or hunt in France — precisely because it is reputed to be the best-tasting food known to man and is therefore in danger of extinction.
Mitterrand wanted it to be the last thing he ever tasted, but actually he died a full week later, so that plan might not have fully worked out for him. Still, his death was, presumably, happy.
In 1973, an Italian-French film came out that captured my imagination to the point that I still think about it now, even though I have never seen it. At the time, I was beginning to read movie reviews with some serious consideration, and I was captivated by the New Yorker review of the Italian-French film “La Grande Bouffe.”
As I remember it, the film was described as a comedy about four middle-aged, world-weary men who decide to eat, drink and, uh, be merry themselves to death. Essentially, it was the flip side of the Mitterrand coin, where food-related hedonism leads to a welcomed, or at least inevitable, death.
It turns out that the film was more involved than that. Apparently, it is a satire on bourgeois excess, indulgence and the banality of consumerism. I can see where that thesis makes sense, but I still think the nonexistent film of my cherished imagination, where the men die while having as much fun as they can, would be better.
And what of others who know that a specific meal will undoubtedly be their last? What of people on death row given one last meal before their execution?
What do they eat?
According to “The Serial Killer Cookbook,” by Ashley Lecker, they eat ice cream or milkshakes. About 80% of condemned prisoners who want dessert ask for one or the other. Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people when he bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City, had a last meal consisting of nothing but a quart of mint chocolate ice cream.
Most, though, want a full meal, too. Most frequent, Lecker found, were requests for Southern comfort food, such as fried chicken. Lecker’s theory is that Southern food is more frequent because most executions take place in Southern states.
Gary Carl Simmons Jr., perpetrator of a particularly brutal murder and rape in Mississippi, wanted a big dinner. A big, big dinner.
He was served a Pizza Hut medium Super Supreme Deep Dish pizza, 10 packs of Parmesan cheese, 10 packs of ranch dressing, a family-size bag of nacho cheese Doritos, eight ounces of jalapeño nacho cheese, four ounces of sliced jalapeño peppers, two large strawberry milkshakes, two cherry Cokes, one super-sized order of McDonald’s fries with extra ketchup and mayonnaise and two pints of strawberry ice cream.
It added up to 29,000 calories. Simmons managed to eat half of it, which is not an inconsiderable achievement.
On the other side of the scale, so to speak, was Robert Anthony Buell, a serial killer of children. All he requested was a single unpitted black olive.
As for me, give me ortolans and give me death.
