I made a cake today for a family that I don’t know well, friends of my husband. It was for a family dealing with the quick, unexpected death of a father, a Sunday School teacher, a Texas transplant to Tennessee, a foster parent, an engineer. It was a death for which the family was not prepared – a mere five week struggle with Cancer that knows no manners and neither calls ahead or provides a schedule. A death that initiated a 100 telephone calls on a rainy Sunday afternoon to friends, family and church members who sat there thinking about their own vulnerability.
So I made a cake. It’s a Southern tradition. When someone you know or someone in your church is mourning a death, you go to the kitchen. I have baked many a cake and dead chicken casserole in the pursuit of showing someone a measure of compassion and care. My mother did it and her mother did it. In some places, funeral homes are outfitted with kitchens and reception areas just for this Southern phenomena and churches regularly post times for the post-funeral meal, along with the rites. And everyone knows the best food is served at funerals.
The cake I made today was a Sock it to Me Cake – an old 70s recipe that should be comforting to an older crowd who is more accustomed to pound cakes and banana puddings than Tiramisu and Dulce de Leche. It seems there are unwritten rules on what is acceptable as funeral food. Death makes us hungry, so best loved items fall in the comfort food category where hams, deviled eggs, potato salad, macaroni and cheese, and yeast rolls reside. Chocolate cake seems to be a good choice as well because chocolate serves as a mood lifter, as any woman can tell you.
My husband will take the cake over to the family, and he will no doubt be invited in for coffee, asked to fix a plate and visit for awhile, meeting people he will never see again. There will be a group of friends in the kitchen, pouring out coffee and serving as air traffic controllers for the legion of casseroles and congealed salads that will arrive.
It seems that the custom of bring food and eating after funerals has transpired for thousands of years, with each culture adapting their own version of rituals and etiquette. Why this old fashioned, homemade courtliness? Why this fixation on food when death is on the menu? Of course, it’s because it is to ease the family responsibilities during this time of grief. But does it have a deeper meaning? Is it because we fear death – or is it an affirmation of our survival? It seems that the ordinary, the simple act of eating together reminds us that we are still alive and not alone. The very act of eating is a belief in our own existence and a statement of our will to live, even in the face of death. It’s something we do with others, with companions.
I love the word companion. From the Latin “companioneum”, the word means “one with whom you would eat bread” – “Con” meaning with and “pan” meaning bread. So our companions in grief are those with whom we would “break bread.” Proof that we are not alone.
I have often been the recipient of that type of food love before. When my brother died too quickly from lung cancer, our home church, the one we grew up in, surrounded us with the casserole brigade and the sweet tea militia. As my mind began to dwell on what heaven is like, I couldn’t help but hope that the food in heaven is as good as a Southern funeral.
So bring on the Sister Shubert rolls with a healthy serving of relatives and even mere acquaintances. It’s not Death Warmed Over. It’s Life Served Fresh Daily.
