Condolences
17 May 2019Today’s prompt: “Comfort”
The air is sickeningly redolent with flowers.
Your black-clad partner is holding it together, grim-faced, as friends and family come up, hug or squeeze a shoulder, and whisper those six horrid words: “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Your mother is clearly about to lose it. It wasn’t supposed to happen in this order. You were supposed to bury her. To compose herself, she fusses with the the food at the buffet, absently replating the ham and checking on the baked ziti, the scalloped potatoes. Comfort food.
The officiant orates about the hereafter. Truth revealed by a better god than the one that killed you? Or a lie offered up to make your passing easier on the survivors? Does it ultimately matter? I don’t know.
Funerals are a study in contrasts and strange passed-down traditions. We wear black, for death and mourning, but bring flowers, a symbol of life. We drink a lot of booze if it’s a wake, or eat a lot of starches and dairy if it’s not, because nothing says the death of a loved one like pasta, potatoes and melted cheese. We fall back on the same words – “I’m so sorry for your loss,” “if there’s anything I can do,” “in a better place.” And most importantly, we allow ourselves to feel miserable together. To touch each other. To take turns being the strong one and the one who just needs to cry right now.
“Comfort.” It’s a strange performance art piece we all engage in, with spoken words, with costumes, with food and set pieces and music and props. And it’s only the beginning of the process, of months or years of continued grief. And it’s so hard, this communal grieving we do, this attempt to snatch a moment of comfort when we’re reeling with loss and grief and mortality. And it’s so strange that anything about this process would help at all. It’s baffling that starches and flowers and mumbled catchphrases could do anything in the face of death. But you know, it’s funny, but sometimes they do. Heck, I’ve been watching videos of people cooking comfort food for the last half hour or so, and I have to say, I feel better.
I don’t know what death is like. I don’t know if there’s an afterlife. I don’t know if you can come back as a ghost, if there are paranormal planes, if it’s possible to communicate with loved ones once they’ve passed. But if you can, can I just say, don’t? Please. Let them have their baked ziti. Let them believe you’re in a better place. Let them try to move on. This is hard enough as it is.