The Way Through the Woods: On Mushrooms and Mourning

by Long Litt Woon

Grief grinds slowly: it devours all the time it needs.

The fieldwork of the heart is a grueling exercise.

I realize that some people are so afraid of death themselves that they find it impossible to do anything but pussyfoot around the issue, but it was hard to accept that their fear was worse than the grief I felt.

It’s the first of April, but no one has tried to trick me. If Eiolf were here, he would have come up with something.

The good name we leave behind us, our posthumous reputation, is not something that money can buy or that can be carved in stone for eternity. It is something we build up little by little, day in, day out, in our dealings with the people around us.

In any case, when you start measuring things in ounces rather than pounds, it’s fair to assume that you’re dealing either with narcotics or rare mushrooms.

mushrooms with a fat-soluble aroma are best cooked with butter, but the matsutake’s aroma is water-soluble, so this mushroom only really comes into its own when used in soup or with rice. To make Japanese-style matsutake rice, bring the rice to a boil, add a handful of chopped matsutakes, turn down the heat, and cover with a lid.

I was determined to permit myself the luxury of grieving.

It has been said that if dogs could talk, we wouldn’t be able to understand them.

I told him that I was working on this book and how it had slowly dawned on me that I was possibly becoming abnormally fixated on mushrooms. He said that had been obvious to him ever since I had turned down the invitation to his wedding because the date happened to clash with a mushroom fair.

Until I moved to Norway, I had always associated avocados with dessert: at home in Malaysia I used to eat avocados with palm sugar.

First, candy the chanterelles. For this you will need 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of water together with 1 cinnamon stick. Bring to a boil and reduce to a syrup. Add 2 cups of small fresh chanterelles or larger ones sliced thinly or diced.

I mean do you even need to add the chanterelles at that point?

I started to shake and my cheeks started to burn when I saw that Eiolf and I had shared our playlists with each other just before he died, although I had no memory of this. All at once I had hours of music that Eiolf had chosen and carefully compiled. I obviously hadn’t listened to this playlist before. There were a number of unexpected choices that were new to me. It was good to be able to listen afresh to certain songs, but it was also simply glorious to enjoy the playlist in its entirety. What these artists and songs had in common was that they had spoken to Eiolf. What a tremendous gift I had been given. I had to listen to Eiolf’s playlist a little at a time to let the music sink in. I pressed “Play” and gave thanks for this blessing.

There is always a temptation, when on foreign ground, to simply carry on talking to the first helpful informant you encounter. Barth’s point was that I should always endeavor to speak to people I hadn’t met before and visit places I hadn’t been to before, constantly expanding my body of data. The anthropologist is thereby forced to arrive at more valid and cogent conclusions.

Sometimes it can even come as an unexpected pleasure not to know where you are. This presupposes, though, that you can stand the torture of not knowing.

Where is Eiolf, now that my grief is not crowding out everything else? He is an imprint on my heart that I will carry with me all my life.

When he died, the calendar changed forever.

Other people might have thanked God or some other higher power, but I sent a tender salute to the one I know in Heaven and thanked him for his caress.