“I can confirm MawMaw cried again when I showed her this final video,” reads the caption on a short film from @andrewdowningphoto. The film runs about two and a quarter minutes, and a line of text stays at the top of the frame the whole way through: “One last meal for Pawpaw…” The closing title card names the piece, “A Meal for Pawpaw,” and credits it “By Andrew Downing.”
It starts with an interview. MawMaw, a white haired woman in a red top, sits in a gray armchair in a living room with a shelf and framed pictures behind her, gesturing with both hands as she talks. Yellow subtitles carry her words. Among the first are “the question ahead of time,” “No, I wouldn’t,” and “the one hard question,” followed by “Oh geez…” and then the question itself: what would she make “for PawPaw one more time”? Partway through, the film cuts to a close up of her with her hand to her nose and eyes, wiping away tears.
Her answer is specific. “I would make him fried chicken,” the subtitles read, then “and fried potatoes” and “and homemade biscuits.” The camera cuts away to framed photographs on her wall while she talks, among them a portrait of an older couple side by side and a snapshot of a man standing in front of a building and a parked car. Back in the armchair, a later subtitle says of the man she is cooking for: “He was country at heart.”
The rest of the film is the meal itself, shot without subtitles; only the line at the top of the frame remains. Now MawMaw is in a white top with pink trim, in a kitchen with wooden cabinets and sheer curtains. She peels a potato with a small knife at a table beside a blue mixing bowl. At a window, she pours flour from a bag into a steel bowl and stirs, with a yellow bottle standing beside it. A spoon drops soft dough into a black cast iron skillet, and she bends to open the oven door. For the chicken, she turns pieces in a yellow bowl of seasoned flour, then, in an overhead shot, lowers a coated piece into a skillet of oil on the stove. A close up shows her hand and a ring. Potatoes cook in a pan under rising steam, and the biscuits come out as one round, golden loaf in a cast iron skillet, resting on a wire rack.
The last scenes are quiet. A close up shows the plate, golden potatoes beside a piece of fried chicken. Then a wide shot of her kitchen, with a white refrigerator and a stove behind a wooden table, shows a single place set, and an overhead shot gives the full plate: two pieces of fried chicken, a biscuit and potatoes, with a glass of milk, a fork and a woven placemat. Nobody sits at the table. Then the title appears in yellow capital letters over the plate, “A MEAL FOR PAWPAW,” with “BY ANDREW DOWNING” in small type beneath.
A reader who has lost someone and thinks about cooking their favorite dish is in territory the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention addresses on its grief page. It suggests honoring the person you lost, and its examples include a celebration of life, a memory book or a tribute page. It also advises people to “talk with friends, family, or people you trust,” to keep a sense of order and purpose by focusing on what you can control, including regular meals and sleep, and to see a health care provider or counselor if grief feels like more than you can manage alone. The same CDC page says anyone struggling or in crisis can call or text 988.
The film shows a concrete way to do the first of those. The menu is not elaborate: chicken floured and pan fried in cast iron, potatoes fried until golden, and biscuits baked in a skillet. The question that opens it is easy to borrow, too. Asking an older relative what one meal they would make for someone they have lost gets a precise answer, as it did here, and the answer is a recipe the family can cook again, with the person who knows it standing at the stove.
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