The Loaf That Waited

Ada Nestor | My Reflections from the Edge

I was in the middle of cold proofing a loaf of sourdough the week before Memorial Day, when my dad first got sick and was hospitalized.

That dough never got baked. It sat for a while until I finally threw it out. But I couldn’t throw away the starter. Every day, even in the middle of hospital runs and late-night phone calls, I fed it. At the time it felt like nothing more than habit, but looking back, I see it for what it was: a small act of persistence, a refusal to let everything stop.

I wasn’t ready to mix and shape and bake. But I wasn’t willing to let it all go either.

He passed on June 28th, just days before the Fourth of July. Those summer weeks felt like suspended time, everything both too fast and too slow. Holidays came and went, but I wasn’t moving with them.

Grief has a way of reshaping you. Not only in the big moments, but in the everyday ones. The routines you once moved through without thought suddenly feel impossible. And yet, somehow, you find which ones you keep alive, even when you can’t explain why. For me, it was the starter. That living jar became the thread I never cut.

Last week, I began easing back in, a batch of muffins, then pumpkin bread. Simpler bakes, less demanding. They gave me a way to step into the kitchen again to bake without the full weight of sourdough pressing down.

And now, Labor Day weekend, I finally baked my first sourdough loaf again.

It wasn’t perfect. But perfection wasn’t the point. What mattered was pulling it out of the oven, realizing that something I had set down during one of the hardest stretches of my life had finally returned.

From Memorial Day to the Fourth of July to Labor Day, three holidays that usually mark the rhythm of summer, I carried grief, loss, and change. And in the quiet of my kitchen, I carried a starter. It tethered me, even when I didn’t realize it.

Resilience doesn’t always announce itself in bold steps forward. Sometimes it looks like feeding a starter day after day, when you don’t know why you’re keeping at it. Sometimes it looks like pumpkin bread. Sometimes it looks like bagels flavored with fall. And sometimes it looks like an imperfect sourdough loaf, baked at the right time, not when you “should” be ready, but when you actually are.

I’m not the same person who started that last loaf back in May. Grief ensures that. But this weekend showed me that I can carry the things I loved before into the life I’m living now. Different, yes. But still here.

This weekend, I baked bread. A small thing. And at the same time, everything.

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If this resonates, I’d love to hear about the small routines you’ve returned to after loss, the ones that reminded you that life does, slowly, keep moving.