Chiming in to add two cents: Yes, absolutely bring food, it’s deeply kind and appreciated. However, a few aspects of the deli platter--the reason it “works”--that needs to be emphasized more, so that you don’t...end up accidentally doing more harm than good?
>It’s good food that you’d like....eat yourself
>It’s varied enough that people can choose what they like from it if there’s multiple people in the house
When my mom died after a brutally short cancer battle when I was in fifth grade, an earnest, kind, well-meaning neighborhood mom made us a huge unseasoned broccoli casserole. I, a small child who hated broccoli and had sensory issues that make me nauseous when I try to eat things with a casserole-esque texture, had to eat broccoli casserole for days.
This did not make me feel better.
The brigade of neighborhood moms continued bringing food by for weeks, and it was only when we received a huge serving platter containing nothing but plain pasta with ground beef mixed in that my dad realized why we were getting these huge servings of weirdly plain, kind of....bad...food.
The mom had just died and everyone concluded he’d be struggling to cook for his kids.
My dad had been the only person cooking meals in this house since before they were even married. My mom could burn a milkshake.
He finally had to tell his closest friend in the Carpool Mom Squad what was going on so that she could delicately disseminate this information through the carpool mom hivemind without hurting anyone’s feelings, because if we had to eat one more goddamn unseasoned meatloaf I was going to set fire to the house.
I would have killed for someone to just bring us a nice, simple, varied deli platter with no strings or assumptions attached! I think some people--in addition to trying to “subtly” give my dad “ideas” for “recipes” he could use to feed us--were almost afraid to like, bring anything too “enthusiastic”. Too spicy or intricate or, like, happy. Because we were grieving and there were young kids involved and they didn’t know what to do.
(I have nothing but love toward the Carpool Mom Brigade for their coordinated operation to help with a problem that didn’t really exist, without embarrassing anyone. They sure did think a huge tin of Just Vegetables was what grieving eleven- and eight-year-olds wanted, though.)
I swear to god there was a point to this.
tl;dr edible food that’s easy to consume is genuinely a godsend when you’re grieving, and if you don’t know a family or the kind of food they like something pre-prepared and varied is a safer bet.
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