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hey since i’m occasionally giving out adult advice. anyone wanna know my very adult and very boring and very sensible suggestion for grief gifts for friends and family when someone close to them dies

alright. this is shamelessly stolen from my godparents when they did this when my grandma passed about ten years ago, and since then i’ve been on both sides of this and it’s surprisingly thoughtful and useful. this is particularly important when people are like, in charge of funeral prep, but anyone who just heard someone close to them just died is gonna be in a certain headspace, so it probably works regardless. people are gonna be sending cards and flowers and other very nice, but ultimately useless gifts.

don’t do that. go to the grocery store and order one of those deli party platters. the ones with like, four different kinds each of meats and cheeses, maybe some sides, and veggies, and bread, and condiments. get the vegetarian version if you know they’re vegetarians. whatever. you know better than i how many people are gonna be eating it, but guess maybe, like, four day’s worth of food.

because, here’s the thing. cards and flowers are very nice, and remind you that you’re in people’s thoughts. but you know what you just. don’t even want to think about when someone dies? making dinner. going to the grocery store. ordering takeout. whatever. you don’t want to have to think about food. you just want to eat in between planning a funeral and working through your grief.

without getting too into it, when my grandma died, we were thrown for a loop. and we ate nothing but what was on that goddamned deli platter for days. because it was quick and easy and fresh and tasted good and we didn’t have to think about food. and ten years later, i don’t remember those cards or flowers, but i sure as hell remember the deli platter.

so next time someone’s going through something, when a family member or close friend just passed. go to your nearest grocery store, and if you can, walk a deli platter over to their place. as soon as you can after you hear. they may look at you weird when you hand it to them, but trust me, in the long run they’re gonna thank you.

^^This

Food helps. I don’t remember the cards & flowers. What I DO remember is the amazing lasagna somebody made me. It fed me for a week during a time when I was simply incapable of finding or preparing meals. The deli platter is an interesting twist on that and I’m filing that away for sure.

honeybaked ham delivers

Not sure where you guys are from, but sending food is so incredibly common in the southern USA, it can actually be a good idea to check with the family to see if they have too much before you bring something.

When my uncle passed everybody in my aunt’s community brought desserts. She lives in the south so of course food was the go-to but people kept bringing just cookies and brownies and cake and stuff…i don’t know who the person was who made us a big potroast, but that person was a goddamn hero who fed us for three days.

Also: funerals cost money. A gift of food can take some of the financial stress off, because it means less money that has to be spent on groceries.

Childhood friends had the mother of 5 kids die slow of cancer when the baby was only about 2. We all brought food over, the whole community, in relays, but recently one of the now-adult kids confessed that she can’t eat lasagna anymore, because that was what so many people had brought that horrible time while her mother was dying.

But even as she said it, she still remembered it, and how grateful her mother was for it at the time, and how grateful her father was after– just, something to keep them going while they lived through it, or in her case, didn’t, and then to pick up the pieces.

Dude’s dad died suddenly in ‘03 and people brought so much food that his mom just hosted the funeral brunch at her house, because there was so much food in her house. She didn’t eat for three days, but when she was ready, it was there.

Her coworkers took up a collection, got a giftcard to the grocery store, and showed up with a full load of household essentials of things they knew her well enough to know she’d use.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

This is absolutely excellent advice.... and also a pretty good description, absent the religious aspects, of the Jewish practice of Sitting Shivah.

[conuly]

If you bring something homemade, then you have a readymade excuse to drop by a week later and pick up your dish - and drop off something else at the same time. Just keep on doing that for a while.