A friend of mine lost her mother this week, and I have tried to be helpful in small ways: going to the service, providing a couple of meals, offering to come and help clean (and making her promise she would call me if she needed it later on) . . . six months ago, I wouldn’t have been so attentive to detail, but experience is, after all, the best teacher. Which means I knew to put the casseroles in disposable pans so that she wouldn’t have to return them.
Doing that kind of cooking is, actually, kind of stressful for me. I have had some bad experiences with post-baby meals . . . I always feel as if there’s some sort of Martha Stewart Standard I can’t achieve. There are a few dishes I do pretty well, but I’m not an organized cook, and the kitchen is still in a state of disarray from my adventures earlier today (I’m going to clean it up when the game is over). I admire people who are so much more competent about these things than I am. I forgot to cook the chicken yesterday, so when I was putting it in the casserole today, it was too hot and burned my fingers. I baked cookies from some frozen dough, but had trouble spooning them out because I didn’t give them enough time to thaw. I spilled chicken broth on the floor and counters. There are dirty dishes in the sink.
Instead of getting stressed, I tried to think of it as part of my sacrifice for my friend, an act of prayer. She probably won’t ever know that it was a little bit difficult for me to bring her those things or to attend the memorial, just like I won’t ever know exactly what people went through to be supportive of me last year.
Last weekend, I went away with some other women from church, and it was another piece in what I’ve been learning about community. I can be somewhat hesitant to put myself in situations like that, going away for the weekend with people I don’t know all that well, but even in the past week, I have seen how those relationships have grown, simply because of being able to spend time together in a new place (over mass quantities of food). I still have a lot to learn about being comfortable and being willing to show who I am, but I am starting to be able to approach relationships from a place of security.
So I was able to offer myself to my friend in a small way: my burned fingers, my slightly deformed cookies. The dishes that are still in my sink. She doesn’t have to know about that. I just want her to know that I was thinking about her.
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Well, I’ve unfortunately had the experience of seeing how a community handles grief from the outside recently in watching the community that surrounds my brother help him. And yeah, Kari, your friend knows—maybe not the struggles that you made in overcoming your insecurities, or the practical issues of cooking—but she knows that you were expressing your love for her. [And yes, those who bring food in disposable containers are showing love and being terribly practical.]
The old line from Derek is, “Words aren’t remembered, but presence is.” I really can’t remember a single conversation from the middle of January, but I do remember who was there for my brother [and who was there for me at the other end of the phone, too].