Julia and Me (Part 4) — Nina Simonds

“You should have an Irish wake for Julia”

My last, poignant, meeting with Julia was the day before she died. I had been planning to visit her for some time after she moved to California, but I had been living in London. By then I knew her health was not good. Two days before I left Boston, her assistant, Stephanie Hersh, warned me that her strength varied from day to day, so she might not be up to seeing me.

Fortunately, the morning of my planned visit, Stephanie called to say that although Julia was weak, she wanted me to see her. I found her in bed in her sweet bungalow in the retirement community of Montecito, California, drifting in and out of consciousness but completely lucid, asking about a number of Boston chefs by name. She playfully nuzzled her mischievous kitten, which her neighbors were threatening to banish from the premises. Pets weren’t normally allowed, but the community powers had been lenient as they adored Julia and had made an exception. She died the following morning, just two days before her 92nd birthday.

By then I had traveled on to San Francisco to visit my friend Mary Risley, a celebrated cooking teacher, who owned the Tante Marie Cooking School, one of the most respected professional cooking schools of its day. Like many of us old timers, Mary had met Julia many times and also had been close with her sister, Dorothy, and longtime assistant, Rosie Manell. When we heard the news of her death in a call from my husband, Mary and I hugged each other and wept. I was still jetlagged from my flight from the East, deeply saddened by her death, and in desperate need of a nap. Before I put my head down I said to Mary: “You should have an Irish wake for Julia. And soon.” When I woke, Mary announced: “So, we’re having an Irish wake tonight. I’ve called everyone I could think of. We should plan on about 30.” As it turned out, the number was much more.

We cancelled our previous booking at the Slanted Door (a Vietnamese restaurant I had been dying to try) for that evening. But what in the world could we possibly serve on such short notice?

“That’s easy,” Mary said. ”We’ll make chicken salad sandwiches and drink Scotch, just like Julia would have done.” And that’s exactly what we did. Some hours later, the kitchen was filled with prominent members of the San Francisco community. Even at such short notice, many had changed their plans because they felt the need to get together, laugh, cry, reminisce, and celebrate Julia’s inspirational energy and spirit.

James Beard, Judith Jones with Julia Child

At the end of the evening, a small core group of us sat around the table listening to soft-spoken Chuck Williams, Julia’s longtime friend and founder of Williams-Sonoma, regale us with unforgettable stories of visiting M.F.K. Fisher in Sonoma with Julia and James Beard. It was almost as if she were sitting there with us. And we all knew she would have enjoyed the evening enormously.