Tragedy struck in the wake of a storm-related power outage a month ago on a Saturday night. But I didn’t know it yet. The lights went out, the a-c clattered off, and the kitchen fridge stopped humming. Thirty minutes later, power returned— lights blinked up, clocks flashed 12:00 12:00 12:00, a-c kicked on, and the fridge resumed its low-level buzz.

Sunday afternoon, I looked in the fridge veggie crisper to see what I had in there to cook for dinner. There was a beautiful shiny purple eggplant, two taut bell peppers, a large sweet onion, a forest green zucchini, and a bulb of pungent fresh garlic. I had a bowl full of tangy Juliette Roma tomatoes on the counter. Ratatouille! Just the thing. Plus, I had left over rice to serve with it.

I’ve belonged to Essex Farm CSA for eighteen years and am in constant amazement at the abundance and quality of the food I have access to year round. While there are years some crops suffer drought, drowning, or pests, so far this year the harvest has been outstanding. In July there was so much basil—the perfume wafting off the bin was intoxicating!— I froze scads of it ground with olive oil in ice cube trays. Five cubes per zip lock snack baggie, four snack baggies per quart freezer bag— I had enough basil cubes to last till spring of 2025! A couple of basil cubes added at the last minute to the finished ratatouille would be heavenly. My mouth watered.

I started a saute of onion and garlic and went out to the garage looking forward to gazing with love at the bounty of frozen herbs, green beans, corn, spinach, chard, collards, and more, so much more, in my upright veggie freezer. It was already packed and this harvest season was just getting started.

I swung open the door and was hit full-face with a damp, warmish miasma of turning veggies, heavy on farty broccoli. The interior was dark. The power was off. Everything inside had thawed. My heart sank and I felt sick. Everything was ruined. All my labor wasted. My stash gone. And much of it not replaceable till next year—the basil, the green beans. This season’s greens that I had prepped—chard, collards, kale— gone. I’d be able to replenish those for the winter, but it would take more hours than I had time for at the counter chopping for the freezer. I went back inside to the heady aroma of caramelizing onion and garlic and cried.  

I am an at-will cook. Almost two decades of cooking seasonally from the farm and from my freezer stash has broken me of retail grocery shopping for specific ingredients for specific recipes. I just cook with whatever is at hand without planning. But now my inventory of culinary art supplies was no more. Grief over the magnitude of the loss swept through me again, leaving me feeling both stricken and silly.

When you lose a beloved person, grieving feels natural and right. But grieving the loss of a thing feels excessive somehow, and shameful. As in, what’s the big deal? It’s just veggies. Get over it. But losing that thing— my veggie freezer stash, a job you love, family photos in a fire— is a big deal. Thanalogist Cole Imperi has named this shadow loss, and the grief is real. When we lose a loved one, our brains light up on scan as if we’ve been stabbed. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that happens with shadow loss too. (Someone, research this please!)

I threw out three full kitchen garbage bags of love and labor, the farmers’ and mine. Saddest thing ever. In the month since, I’ve checked the impulse to go out to the garage to commune with my veggie freezer more times than I can count. Each time is a painful jolt. My poor, poor veggie freezer. It is so forlornly empty. I have to go to the store to buy basil. That is just wrong.