On a quiet morning in late July, Diana Kennedy, a well-known expert on Mexican cuisine and my friend, passed away at her home in Michoacán, Mexico, seven months away from becoming one of the few centenarians on Earth. I received the news by text message after a brief but well-earned swim on a small pebbly beach in Positano, Italy, following a solo hike from the cloudline to the sea called ‘The Path of the Gods’. I’d befriended a young man at the end of the hike who accompanied me down to the beach, and without even thinking, I reached out for a hug from him to quell my shock.
It seems no matter how logical, death is something you don’t see coming. I thought about our last phone conversation at the height of the pandemic, during which Diana asked me when I was coming down to visit again (I never did). Her age at the time of her passing was notable, as she had claimed that if she made it to 100, she planned to kill herself, which is an odd thing for a petite nonagenarian woman from Essex to say. When asked why, she would very matter-of-factly reply that her driver’s licence was set to expire that year and she didn’t feel like renewing it. She made it just under the wire, at ninety-nine and a half.
