Aunt Lutie can’t remember when she started calling the funeral home hotlines every morning, but she can tell you exactly when her tireless and selfless dedication to her community began to yield fruit.
“January 18, 2005,” she says. “Eddie Ray Barnell, ninety-two, dropped dead in the middle of the night on a Saturday. Heart attack in the backyard. He was in his bare feet, and to this day his wife says she has no idea why he went outside. Some of us have our suspicions, but we don’t like to talk out of turn.
“Of course the editor down at the Gazette couldn’t have known to anticipate it before the last edition of the week on Friday. I was the first one out to the Barnell place with my mixed medley casserole. Serves ten. Twelve if you don’t spoon out big portions, and I knew it would be a small crowd at the house because the Barnells, bless their hearts, never had any children.”
Aunt Lutie always keeps at least one casserole in the freezer, along with a small loaf or two of banana nut bread, in order to be prepared at all times for just such unfortunate situations. But when time allows, she likes to start from scratch. It seems more compassionate, she thinks, and it gives her an edge over the competition now that Louise from the post office has started calling the hotlines too.
“But everyone knows I was the first one to think of it, and Louise’s memory is slipping,” says Aunt Lutie, standing up just a little taller and smoothing down her housecoat with pride when she speaks of her industrious nature. She doesn’t like to brag, of course; just set the record straight is all.
“Louise never remembers to call the hotlines on the weekends, and most days she forgets that Oddfellows Funeral Parlor is not the only game in town anymore. And anyway, nobody likes that ‘Brussels sprouts supreme’ of hers. Louise says it’s an ‘acquired taste,’ but I have yet to meet anyone who’s ‘acquired’ it, especially when mired in the throes of grief.”
Aunt Lutie believes with all her heart that what people need in such a trying time is food they can count on, food that doesn’t confuse them, or taste funny, or threaten to cause them indigestion. It’s the least you can do for someone who has just lost a loved one.
“When my beloved Pete passed,” Aunt Lutie says, “I about keeled over myself when Myra Sullivan had the gall to leave a thermos of clam chowder on my front porch with a note that read, ‘a little something to warm your soul.’ I can’t think of one time in my seventy-four years on this earth when clams have warmed my soul, and you can bet your life that was canned soup. She might have added one of those small cartons of whipping cream, but I doubt it. No wonder she didn’t want to show her face inside the house.”
Aunt Lutie takes her mission seriously. It’s not a role assigned to her by anyone local, mind you, as Aunt Lutie gets her marching orders from the Lord. In fact, she is so intent on spreading solace through cooking that she doesn’t always stop to think if her efforts will be welcome. Like the time she showed up at a funeral home over in Atlanta for the visitation of a woman she had met recently on a church retreat. The “Senior Singles Spiritual Salvation Weekend” turned out to be a little too evangelical for Aunt Lutie, but she was thankful for two days in the mountains nonetheless.
To no avail, Aunt Lutie looked hither and yon throughout the sprawling funeral home for the kitchen or a meeting room so that she might add her pies to the other covered dishes brought by the mourners. Several people stared at her blankly when she inquired, so she finally returned the pies to the towel on the back seat of her Buick before trying again to sign the guest book and pay her respects to the dead woman’s children. “Ne’er do wells,” the woman had said when talking about them with Aunt Lutie at the retreat, but Aunt Lutie thought they deserved a hug at least, seeing that they wouldn’t get to eat her pies.
“What kind of people don’t bring food to visitation?” says Aunt Lutie, still incredulous several months after the fact. “The grieving family needs to keep up their strength.”
Stunned but not defeated, Aunt Lutie decided to swing by the Happy Trails Retirement Village on her way back to town. She knew in her heart that someone needed what she had to give. It wasn’t just anybody who could roll out a crust with such finesse that it baked up firm and flaky. But Aunt Lutie could. It was a gift. Maybe not an official “fruit of the spirit” like those outlined by St. Paul, she’ll grant you that. But a gift nonetheless.
So she would search out those who were hurting—and hungry—and offer them a slice of sweet relief. With any luck, they would take and eat and feel a little better, and the good Lord would be able to say of Aunt Lutie yet again, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”