The Sacrificial Passover Ham

While I was with my parents over spring break, my husband was taking his mother home from our house, in the opposite direction from where I was.  He found his own set of difficulties to deal with, but we tried to support each other across the distance.  As I complained to him about my parents’ situation, he completely sympathized, as he had gone through similar problems during the last year of his own father’s life.

When we started the drive home Easter Sunday morning, I was all out of energy.  Instead of stopping for a lunch break, we pushed on through and made it home by mid-afternoon.  As we came in the house, there was a heavenly aroma of... bacon?!   I turned the corner from the kitchen to the dining room and there was... an Easter lily!  And heading upstairs there was... my own bathroom.  At the Old Folks Home it was difficult to take a relaxing shower, so the first thing I did when I got home was hop in the shower.  After that, my husband encouraged me to take a nap.  I slept for two hours.  Oh, bliss!

After my nap, I investigated the bacon aroma.  It wasn’t bacon, but was pretty close.  My husband had gone whole hog, shall we say, and cooked a ham on the bone for our Easter dinner.  This may seem like nothing out of the ordinary, but I must remind my readers that it was still Passover.  While the Common Household does not keep kosher, they avoid pork during major Jewish holidays.  Making a ham was a supreme sacrifice for my husband, who is a bona fide nice Jewish boy. 

At the same time, he also made an entire second dinner, in case someone would refuse to eat the ham.  He roasted a turkey breast with vegetables.  He stir-fried some broccoli, and mashed some potatoes.  He really went all out.  Just one more thing needed to complete our Easter dinner – matzo, of course. 

As we sat down to our Easter ham dinner, I saw a parallel, however distant, between God’s sacrifice leading to the Easter resurrection, and the sacrificial meal and reviving naptime my husband offered me.  There was a reason that ham tasted so heavenly.

We have returned to our non-pork existence, but when I use the oven, there is still a faint aroma of bacon that wafts out at me when I open the oven door.  And there are several meals worth of ham in the freezer. 

The Easter-Passover Ham

The non-ham Easter dinner

Easter Still-Life with Lily, Matzo, and Ham