The Last Cucumber — Journey with the Starks

I learned a game from one of my childhood best friends that has remained in the back of my mind ever since. I have never seen a game create such a thick atmosphere of mystery and intrigue with so few requirements: a few friends and a plate of chopped cucumber. The game was called “The Last Cucumber”.

My friend’s mother would bring a plate of peeled and chopped cucumbers to the table, and play would immediately commence with little hands reaching and grabbing slice after slice. Many of these cucumber slices would be immediately consumed, but a portion of them would be tucked out of sight. Perhaps behind a cup, between a stack of napkins, under one’s legs as they sat a little more delicately at the table.

Eventually, the plate would run out of cucumbers and that is when the game would truly begin. One of the kids around the table would begin by presenting one of their hidden cucumber slices to the rest of the participants, declaring “I have the last cucumber.” They would then eat it. This player would, no doubt, be corrected by another player who would reveal a slice saying “No, I have the last cucumber”. That slice would be consumed ceremoniously, only to have yet another member of the table smugly counter “Sorry guys, this one is the last cucumber.”

This could go on for a while, and every time another cucumber was revealed, everyone grew a little more certain that their super-secret slice may truly be the ultimate one. Eventually, one child’s claim would be go unchallenged, and they would be declared winner and sole possessor of “the last cucumber”. Maybe a forgotten slice would rot in a forgotten hiding spot for the next few weeks, but without an observer, did it ever really exist?

I have been declaring “lasts” to myself and members of our household for the past 9 months or more. We started Fall of 2019 saying, with a degree of certainty, that this would be our last corn maze, last Hartsburg Pumpkin Festival, last apple picking session, last time cutting down a Christmas tree, etc.

We knew the time that we planned to depart, and we could mark off to the day when we could start adding the label “last” to an upcoming event. There was a neat structure and predictability to it.

And then came “the germs”, as our children call it.

All of the sudden, some of the “last” things we were anticipating in 2020 would never happen. For example, Columbia, MO’s 2020 Art in the Park festival, one of our favorite summer community events, was cancelled. It turned out the 2019 festival was likely our “last”. I did not get to hold it up in front of my sons and make any ceremonious declarations.

As things pick up, It is getting harder to assign currently and retroactively what is or was our “last” now.

(Likely) Our last 4th of July Fireworks for a while

The litany of past moments assumed to be unimportant and “not-the-last”, those face-to-face conversations I gave no mind to, many of which I may not remember - were they the last ones? Sometimes I find myself searching my memory, as though it is my friend’s kitchen table, for those moments to identify and hold them up ceremoniously like a freshly cut cucumber, declaring with all the pomp a 10 year old can muster that “Yes, this! This is the last one!”

This may be, in part, what my grieving process is going to look like, and that is ok. The challenge is to balance this with the knowledge that God is the true “Alpha and Omega, the first and the last” (Rev. 21:6), and even when it feels like my process of emotionally logging this journey has gone off the rails, “The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.” (Ps 121:8) Just like a large portion of scriptures, I don’t know fully what it means, but I still draw comfort and peace from it.