Comfort Food

I can’t imagine the grief that would come from losing a mother and a grandmother at such a young age, with such little warning. I am fortunate enough that all of the close family members I have lost have been at the ends of long, rich lives. The most recent was my maternal grandmother. It wasn’t a surprise, but I still cried myself back to sleep when I got the seven am phone call from my mother, my freshman year of college. I didn’t have anything as concrete as frozen casseroles to eat, not with campus dining, but I remember the night before it happened, I had walked with my roommate and two other friends all the way to Dobbs. I cried over my ham and cheese sandwich.

This is not me trying to make anyone feel bad. I just have a very limited way of communicating emotions with normal human beings. Food, obviously, won’t fill the hole a person leaves in your heart. But it can fill your stomach, and when everything hurts, it is a comfort. I’ve rarely had food so filling as what you can find in a casserole dish. Casseroles unite us in grief. I don’t know I’ve ever met someone that actively chooses to consume casseroles outside of the grieving period, despite their relatively inexpensive nature and ease of preparation. There is something so human about everyone bringing casseroles to fill a stomach when a heart is aching.