Our friend Danny Brookman’s dad lingered for months, then died. The news came like much news does these days, in a text message. Dec.15, 2011, 8:54 a.m. “Need you guys: My Dad just passed.”
What caught me off short was the plural: you guys. I know he needed my wife, Naomi Levy, a rabbi — she was to do the funeral. But me, too? I’ve never considered myself particularly adept around the bereaved.
I doubt I’m alone in my particular uncertainty. In a culture that denies death, giving it over to professionals in sectioned-off hospitals, many of us grow up not knowing how to react in its presence. Add to that the natural male discomfort in the presence of unbridled emotion, and you have a perfect storm of awkwardness.
But as you get older, it turns out, people die. You can’t avoid funerals. In the beginning, my salvation was in those explanatory sheets many funeral homes pass out to visitors, along with yarmulkes and prayer books, spelling out proper etiquette for such occasions. “Do not tell the aggrieved, ‘It’s probably all for the best.’ We all want to fix things. We all want to take the grief away. But we cannot.”
I liked those insights. Left to my own devices, I proved myself capable of foul-ups and embarrassments of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”-like proportions.
In Israel, for instance, a friend once told me she was taking the day off to be with her parents for her uncle’s shloshim.
“Mazel tov!” I said.
She looked at me like I was some sort of monster. Shloshim in Hebrew means 30, and I assumed she meant her uncle was celebrating a birthday. How was I supposed to know it’s also the name for the end of the 30 days following the death of a loved one?
What I know now, I’ve learned by watching my wife. Naomi is a talented rabbi, but of all her talents in that field, among the greatest is her ability to comfort mourners. She is as at home in a cemetery as I am uneasy there. She’s on the phone when the bad news is freshest; she’s at home when the grief is at its most raw.
Over the years, I have learned from her. She listens more than she speaks, and when she talks, she combines comforting words with a gentle walk-through of Jewish ritual. I’ve come to appreciate that ritual as utterly brilliant in its approach to death and dying. It gives a kind of floor to the bottomless pit of loss. This is what you do first. Then this. Then this. I’ve seen people who reject every other aspect of religion follow these funeral rites to the letter. Like recipes perfected over centuries, they work.
After Naomi hung up the phone with Danny, she said she was going to their home later that evening. All the family would be gathering, and she wanted to sit among them, hear their stories of their father and grandfather, Bob Brookman, to prepare for the funeral.
As much as I love Danny and his family, I couldn’t imagine my role there. Naomi was there to guide them from the shock of loss to the beginning of the process of grieving. What could I do?
By now, of course, I knew I didn’t have to do anything, just be with the family and listen. But just showing up didn’t seem to be enough. I knew there was nothing necessarily to do, no way to make things right, but that didn’t stop me from feeling the need to do something to make things better.
Then it struck me. I could cook comfort food. I texted Danny’s wife, Linda, and told her I’d be bringing over dinner that night. I didn’t have the words, but I felt comfortable in the language of food. So I cooked comfort food.
I suppose those meals during mourning are the ultimate comfort food. Jewish law actually has a name for the first meal after a funeral, seudat hevrah, and offers stipulations about not just what to eat, but how. The meal must be cooked by others, not the mourners. It is customary to start with an egg, to symbolize the circle of life, and mourners are to be handed their first piece of bread. Our job, literally, is to force life in the midst of death.
In my case, the funeral hadn’t taken place yet, and I wanted to do better than just an egg. Part of the comfort of food, I figured, was its ability, through smell and taste, to give pleasure in the midst of pain.
And making the food was my way of showing I was with Danny — there for him and his family in the best way I knew how. If the food comforted them, cooking it comforted me.
We sat at a long dining table. What we ate was nothing elaborate — grilled skirt steak, chimichurri, cauliflower puree — but it was homemade. Danny’s brother, Gary, a winemaker in Napa, opened some special bottles of his Brookman Cabernet. It was enough to elevate my simple food into something memorable.
Afterward, we all moved into the living room, and Naomi led the family in recounting their memories of Bob. I joined the circle and kept quiet. But for once, maybe for the first time, I felt at home in the house of mourning.
Cauliflower Puree
Ingredients
- 1 head cauliflower
- 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
- ½ tsp salt
- 2 cloves garlic, peeled (optional)
- cloves garlic, peeled (optional)
Instructions
- Wash the cauliflower. Peel off all the green leaves, but don’t throw them away. Ever. Chopped in rough pieces, roasted in a hot oven with olive oil, salt and garlic—cauliflower leaves are one of nature’s great flavors. (Or use with chicken, below)
- So: To a large pot, add cauliflower and garlic. Add water to reach about 1/3 up the the vegetable. Bring to a boil, cover, and let boil until cauliflower is extremely tender, about 25 minutes. You can test it by poking it with a fork, which should slide in easily.
- Remove from heat. Drain and reserve the water. If you have an immersion or stick blender, use it to start pureeing the vegetable, adding the olive oil, salt, pepper, and enough reserved water to make a smooth puree. You can transfer everything to a blender and do the same. The key is don’t stop until the olive oil is emulsified and the mixture is silky and airy. Adjust the seasoning and keep warm until serving.
