In times of grief, the most basic and often the hardest thing we need is to remain present. Joan is 81, about four years older than my mother. She lost her husband, Allen, just weeks after Orli was diagnosed with liver cancer in late 2019. One afternoon last spring, she offered me a spoon and shared a bowl of ice cream as she told me a story. After her first two children, she lost twins, one stillborn and the other living outside the womb, but only briefly. And yet she lived. She had a reason to live. “I usually consider myself lucky,” she told me. She has since had another child. She told me the story not as a comparison, but as a context.
I’ve come to believe that what keeps us going after loss – and not just surviving, but living – is staying curious.
In times of grief and crisis, food is often an action, an act. Food is a typical way of meeting the needs of those who are suffering more than we can imagine, especially when we feel hindered by our own limitations. Food is often delivered for our families and for ourselves. It is delivered without us offering or claiming to be present.
In the first weeks after Orli’s bewildering diagnosis, our home was overflowing with food. We set up coolers for food delivery to our doorstep and online forms that well-meaning friends, acquaintances, synagogue members, and others filled out. In the beginning, it was a relief not to have to think or work, just to open a container and collapse.
But it wasn’t sustainable. Hana and Orli wanted the recipes we knew. And I missed the normality, the rhythm of cooking. We were grateful for everyone and turned inward. When Orli passed away last March, our table was full of sweets, babka, rugelax, cookies, but there weren’t enough people to eat it all. The food was underwhelming, it felt pointless. It had no taste.
