1000 Last Suppers: My Morbid Musings
By Paula Gillison Akinwole

Trigger Warning: Death, Suicide, Pure Utter Confusion

There are two types of last suppers. The one in which Jesus gathered his people for a meal and announced he was gonna die soon. And the one where death row inmates pick a final meal cause… they’re gonna die soon. I guess it’s technically the same… a last supper. Okay, how about this then. There are two types of last suppers. One in which someone has a final meal before they die and my kind, where I have one last final binge meal of the food I like before changing my diet… so that I don’t die. 

All last suppers are about death, I suppose. I have had one thousand of them. Most commonly on December 31st, pick any year. I buy, cook, or order whatever my last meal will be in full conviction that tomorrow, January 1st, pick any year, will be the start of my new healthier eating lifestyle. Three months later, I typically have another last supper. And three to six months after that, another. The most recent last supper, year 2025, I was sitting in the movie theater for the 9PM showing of Wicked. I order a tall Bold Rock and a gyro -hold the onions- w/ french fries. As I ate, I had a realization. I was bullshitting myself! This was not my last supper because if it were, like the 999 last suppers before, it would have included a desert. I didn’t want dessert. Which meant my sweet tooth would not be satisfied enough to make this an actual martyr meal. Which meant I’d either have another last supper soon or I was going to actually have to make a change.

The crazy part is that this really should be easy for me because I have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, endometriosis, no gallbladder, a weird toe tumor, and potentially a spot on my brain. All that stuff really should scare a bitch into being healthy. I mean, one day soon, I might really have a last supper and not even know it was my last. I’ll just wake up dead …and then I’ll be pissed that my last meal was a bland boneless chicken thigh and brown rice cause I was trying to eat healthy. What a waste!

What is it that makes me not do the things I ought to do when I know not doing the things I ought to do will kill me? I once heard a therapist say (or I heard someone tell me they once heard a therapist say) that suicidal black people don’t just kill themselves. They instead participate in activities that are likely to kill them. Everyone in the funeral will say that she’s gone too soon or she had so much life left not knowing that she didn’t even want one more day in the life she was living. She wanted to change anyway… Didn’t they know she’d had 1000 last suppers in preparation for this exact moment?

I once heard the story of a woman with diabetes who drank a whole Pepsi then died. Suicide, right?

For the record, at this moment I have no desire to off-myself intentionally or fake accidentally. Why? Because I think that’s too obvious. Me dying young is so fucking predictable. And I’ll be damned if I die in a basic ass boring way like a car accident or from a heart attack. Unless it’s like a heartbreak heart attack, that would be my type of dramatic! Nor do I wanna die in an embarrassing way like choking on something…. or diabetes. Can you imagine? 

Oh Paula, yeah she had the sugars and was on her one thousandth last supper. She just couldn’t say no to that ginger ale. (Well, it wouldn’t be ginger ale. You know that stuff is medicine for black folks.) She just couldn’t say no to that key lime pie! Rest In Peace Fatty!

There have been moments where I really thought I was about to die and didn’t. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been scared enough to actually change that way I am. Maybe I’m not convinced I can die. Maybe I’m invisible. I mean, I’ve never seen anyone come back from the dead to know that being dead is real. Should this all be a simulation or the prelude to forever, I can only hope that in the new life I get the healthier body I deserve to have. But in case it’s not and when you die you’re stuck forever how you are now, I don’t want to be a ghost with diabetes. I don’t mind being fat but I’ll be damned if my ghostly ass still gotta take insulin. 

Maybe that’s motivation enough.
In the words of my friend Starr, “In my mind 2025 starts on Feb 1st cause January can go to hell”
So maybe just one more last supper….

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