Most times, the best thing you can do for someone who is grieving is offer to listen. Lending an ear does more than you might imagine. Quite often, though, the next best thing you can do for someone who is grieving is to offer to bring food.
Growing up in Mississippi, I was introduced at a young age to the idea that food serves as a tangible expression of sympathy. When news of death came to my family’s home—be it a neighbor, church member, friend, or business associate of my father’s—Mother’s response was, “What can I bring?”
So I learned early on about the assignment of duties, the scheduling of deliveries, and which foods freeze best for reheating later. Polling friends and neighbors to find out who had time to bake a casserole and who had eggs on hand to whip up a pound cake. Who could take something over to the family right away, and which person could drop off a full meal later in the day, closer to suppertime. How to affix a piece of masking tape with my name on it to the bottom of a glass dish, so the recipient would know who should get the thank-you note and where the 13 x 9-inch pan needed to be returned in a timely manner.
I sensed, seemingly without being taught, the comfort that a covered dish could provide for someone who had little interest in eating. But the heart and soul of such culinary kindness was made real for me when my own father died some ten years ago.
As Mother and I returned home from the hospital on that awful Monday afternoon in September we noticed something hanging from the knob of the back door. Inside that plastic bag were a spiral ham, a loaf of sourdough bread, and a jar of honey mustard. The sight of that dangling pork caused me to burst into tears. Now I knew my father was really dead, because friends had already started bringing food.
The sandwiches Mother and I ate that night kept us going until morning, when we went to meet my sisters at Wright and Ferguson Funeral Home to make my father’s final arrangements. It sounds like a simple thing, and it was: meat and bread. But it was also concern and sympathy and love. And for two sad women—on that particular night, in that particular kitchen—it might as well have been manna from heaven.
After my father’s burial, family and friends gathered at a cousin’s house not far from St. Peter’s Cemetery in Oxford. There was pink cake and fried chicken, biscuits and smoked meats, congealed salad with mayonnaise on top. Stuffed eggs with and without paprika. Sweet tea served in etched glasses that had touched generations of my family’s lips.
I circled the dining room table like a woman who had been starved for days. As I put yet another forkful of food into my mouth, I began to feel guilty about my gluttony. How could I eat so much when my precious father was dead? But the food served a twofold purpose. It nourished my physical body, which had been drained by the unexpected death and drawn-out days of funeralizing. And sharing the food with my kinfolk, who had lovingly prepared the smorgasbord, replenished my spirits as well.
In the trying months after my father’s death, there were days, of course, when Mother and I could not eat a bite because we were too busy crying and remembering. But on those occasions when we were hungry, craving food but also connection, we had only to open the door to the extra freezer in the laundry room. Nestled on the frost-covered wire shelves, in all their aluminum-foiled glory, were sausage and wild rice, pork loin, and gumbo. Yeast rolls and cheese bread and cakes. The knowledge that someone had cared enough to prepare food for us warmed our hearts as we heated the dishes according to the directions on the index cards taped to the containers. These gifts—which is what we considered them to be— strengthened Mother and me when we thought we might not survive our loss. Lonely nights were made more tolerable through such tangible offerings of comfort, because at least we did not have to worry about feeding ourselves. We had enough to contend with as we tried to imagine our lives without the man who had been the center of our family’s universe.
It’s now been a decade since I lost my father, the first love of my life, and I can still remember, in a few instances at least, who brought which food to our home. In some ways, those Pyrex dishes and cookie sheets continue to sustain me today. Because long after the food has been consumed, the memories remain.