Grilled Cheese Sandwiches in Memory of Wayne Static

Every time I think of Wayne Static, I think of grilled cheeses, and since his death that’s all I’ve been thinking about.

Grief is a weird thing, and I’d love to say that I’m a stranger to it, but that’s just not the case. I’m sure you’ve experienced losses of your own too.

To dive a little deeper into the world of grief, I did a little research. There are 5 stages of grief:

• Denial
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression
• Acceptance

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It’s odd how the universe works. A show that I watch regularly recently discussed the different stages of grief through their storytelling. They made light of it with a silly situation, while familiarizing us with it’s five stages.

One of the misconceptions of the stages of grief is that they are linear. Each of these 5 stages can hit you in any order, at multiple times, with varying duration. The goal of defining these stages was not to pigeon-hole our emotions into neat little boxes, but rather to define the major emotions that surface after we’ve lost someone or something special. The more readily we accept and feel these emotions after losing a loved one, the quicker we are able to heal, and the intense emotions dissipate.

From Grief.com:

Denial and shock help us to cope and make survival possible. Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle.

Photo credit: Jeremy Danger

I’ve been in complete disbelief about the death of Wayne- screaming at the universe that this simply cannot be true.

“What if we made more of an effort?” – Bargaining. What if we did this, and that, and everything else in between.

Depression – not really wanting to talk to anybody about it, or anything, and pretty much feeling sad all the time, which is not me at all. I hate not being happy.

Anger has manifested by taking things out on people close to me. I am embarrassed to say that, but it’s the truth. I let myself get frustrated and angry about little things that normally wouldn’t bother me so much. We are all human, and all we can do is to try to recognize what’s happening so that the damage we do is minimal.

Denial has been the strong under-current for me throughout this experience, and depression has driven me to want to honor his memory – a faint sliver of acceptance.

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “Time heals all wounds.” When I was younger, I took that to mean that eventually, one day, your consciousness will return to it’s state before the tragedy. I don’t think it’s possible to do that. You will always remember the person who died and do things to honor their memory. Time won’t change that – it won’t erase the memory of that person or thing, and there will always be pain of loss. I think that after a period of time, acceptance is the dominant stage you feel with regards to the respective tragedy. My father died 5 years ago. Since then I’ve lost my only Uncle, my only Grandfather (my other Grandfather on my Mom’s side died when she was 13), a very close family friend that I referred to as a “fake Aunt”, a dear friend and colleague from college who was taken way too soon, my real Aunt who helped put me through college, Mama Berenis, and now Wayne.

I’m telling you all of this to lend more credibility to what I’m about to say to you. Even though 5 years really isn’t that long, I can say with conviction that time will not take away the pain of losing my father, or any of my other loved ones. It just won’t. I will always, always cry over them. I will always get angry and sad about their deaths, ask myself “what if?”, and experience disbelief that they really have left this Earth. There will forever be awkward moments of spontaneously crying at the most inconvenient places and times. I have found that the key to acceptance of this new reality, is letting yourself feel all of these things when they happen. I awkwardly cried in front of my co-worker who drew this amazing photo of Wayne.

I’ve found that the quicker you let the feelings take you, the quicker they pass (most of the time), and you wind up feeling less angry or depressed. You don’t bargain as much, and you aren’t in denial as much. Acceptance takes over.

So, to lighten things up a bit, and get to some good food, and a teeny bit of closure, I present this awesome grilled cheese sandwich. I feel that this honors Wayne’s memory for me. I’m all into different flavor combos, and home-made stuff. He liked simple cheese sandwiches. This is part of my grieving process.

I made home-made wheat bread using Annemarie’s recipe from her site Real Food Real Deals. It was super easy to follow, and absolutely delicious! I knew this would be perfect for the grilled cheese sandwiches.

Kerrygold Reserve Cheddar was the cheese of choice this time, sharp and smooth. Add a sprinkle of rosemary, and some super-thin slices of pear, and you’ve got yourself a spectacular combination!

Fry that up in some Kerrygold butter, and you have yourself a seriously decadent, gourmet grilled cheese!

Serve that baby up with your favorite brew – here I used Golden Road Brewing’s Back Home Gingerbread Stout, which should be your go-to holiday beer. It is FANTASTIC, and makes Christmas cheer spring up all around you. With that, you’ve got yourself a splendid memorial-worthy meal.

Lovingly,

Listening to:
Shadow Zone
Static-X – Shadow Zone