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Once, when I was very young, my grandmother told me a story about a group of women called “grief eaters.” These women were always of an uncertain age but certainly ancient. They appeared like specters after a person’s death and lingered only long enough to take a plate to go. They would hover at the periphery, drying tears with lipstick stained worn napkins, would press warm hugs into bodies wracked with grief. Like sponges they would soak up the story until every piece of the decedent was stitched together to be draped over the women’s shoulders and carted off. Their presence was expected, my grandmother explained. Longed for. They helped to shoulder the burden, and in return — only for a moment — their importance was irreplaceable.
This, my grandmother said, is the reason we eat after someone has passed. We are eating their grief.
I have been to well over a dozen funerals in my three decades. I remember the overwhelming desire for movement from the stiffened, flower soaked body (a grotesque desperation for proof of unending life) and the post funerary food. Crisp fried chicken and buttery soft rolls. Green beans and macaroni and cheese. Cake and tea sweet enough to burn holes into your teeth. Spaghetti like bloodied worms at my cousin’s funeral. There I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t even want to be there. But I ate because his mother wanted me to and I wanted to be nearer to people who had…
