The Last Supper

Dear Tony,

I don’t know what to call you. You’ve never been “Tony” to me, and you’ve certainly never been “Uncle Tony”, as some have taken to referring to you. Frankly you’ve only ever been “Anthony Bourdain”, but addressing a letter as such also seems wrong, somehow.

I still don’t quite know if I’m ready to write. I don’t quite know yet what it is I need to say. They’ve stopped writing about you. Last I saw was an article detailing your toxicology report, that no narcotics were found in your system at time of death. That and you’d skipped dinner the night before your body was found. What else was there to measure?

You stared down the ultimate Undertoad with no Last Supper. That thought and the image of dear Eric Ripert finding you have brought me down, at times. Was he surprised? Did he somehow know what awaited when he knocked quietly on your door and, gentle, called your name?

People who were close to you said you had a darkness in the “last months”, but wasn’t that darkness omnipresent? Hasn’t it always been a little bit of what has driven you so hard to seek further and farther afield the satisfaction “normal” people find in daily life? Taking a shower, reading the news, bad coffee, worse food. What about your wiring drove your incessant drum beat, and is that ultimately what stopped your march through the universe?

In the book “The Last Supper”, you told Melanie Dunea that eating was about submission. That if you were to die tomorrow, your last meal on earth would consist of “Roast bone marrow with parsley and caper salad, with a few toasted slices of baguette and some good sea salt”. You also told her that “Given that I’m ostensibly facing imminent death, I’d probably prefer being alone”. This was published in 2007. Did it somehow cross your mind the day you showed yourself out? In any of the preceding days? I know it is a game, but is it really? You left us in France, bone marrow aplenty. You said you wanted to leave the world naked, screaming, and covered with blood. Instead you went silently, dangling from the rafters that held up the night.

I have so many questions for which there will never be answers.

There is a very large part of me that feels like I don’t deserve to be feeling this way (especially after all this time). It's almost been a year. There are those in your life that loved you in real time - that LOVE you in real time, still. You are, to me, a fantasy; you have only ever been my imaginary friend. And frankly I think I would have probably bored you - frankly I feel like most of your fans probably bored you. But every day I hoped that I wouldn’t. Every day I hoped that you’d find the same light in me.

You took me with you. You brought all of us with you. You showed me family, and where I need to be, where I belong. You brought me to Montreal and Southeast Asia, for which I will be eternally grateful. Showed me that the ideas I’ve always been drawn to have a foundation in the history of food culture, and that the beauty surrounding it all is legitimate, fleeting, and incredibly important. You showed me that it’s all we have. I hang on to that beauty and that hope but in my quieter days, am saturated with the understanding that ultimately, it wasn’t enough for you. That despite the incredible community elevating you and your words, it let you down. We all let you down. There are many, I’m certain, who would argue that YOU let US down. I don’t know what to say to that. Did you let your daughter down? I don’t know the answer. Probably. Does she understand? Not right now, no. Will she ever understand? I’m not sure. That understanding comes from a very dark, very cold place. All I can do is send her, and her mother, and your mother, peace and light and comfort that you are no longer burning. To burn bright is to burn hot, and Icarus shows us, it cannot last. Like stars. The brighter they are, the hotter they are, and unless they’ve got the mass of the sun on their side, they will burn through their supply and explode, supernova style.

Where’s your supernova? Has it been you, all along?

I miss you. I'm grateful for you. I never knew you, and I never will.

Thank you.