I’m a 26 yo male and it seems weird to me. If one of my friend’s parents died I would bring over alcohol not food. I can kind of wrap my mind around a desert/comfort food thing but only if you know it’s their favorite thing ever.
I grew up on an Air force base in Korea and in California if it turns out to be regional and not age related.
Bringing food for the family doesn’t have to go shopping works out great. Something that worked out good for us was deli meats, cheeses, buns and other deli stuff. I went almost two days without eating once and the first food that hit my mouth, triggered a feeding frenzy. Unfortunately other family members ate first and almost all the food was gone. The pounds of food that had been consumed shocked me.
Yeah I agree with this. Nice custom all over America for the people who are grieving heavy or too busy to deal with food…but I can see your boyfriend’s point that it may seem weird in this case.
The food goes to the people who are grieving heavy and busy. Your boyfriend’s friend will be there, at their houses, eating the food people brought THEM. He might not get back to your baked ziti for a week!
Unless he is thoughtful enough to deliver it to his family. Depends on the dude.
I’d say that taking him out to dinner fulfills some of the same functions that taking over a casserole does. It still says “we’re thinking of you while you’re grieving.” “We care about you.” and “Here, don’t worry about having to cook and clean, tonight. Your friends will see that it’s done for you.” Plus, if he’s the type of person who likes company, it isn’t as solitary as a casserole.
That said, there’s nothing at all wrong with bringing a casserole with the instructions “heat this for 20 minutes at 400” to a man in his 20s. It’s a thoughtful and traditional thing to do for someone.
Tell you what - if he doesn’t want the food, ship it on over to me. I’ll take it!
No, the thought is to lighten some of the burden the family is carrying. After a close relative dies, there’s just so freaking much going on and that you have to do related to that, the last thing you need physically or mentally is another goddamn chore. So people bring you things to eat that you don’t have to shop for or cook, they wash the dishes and tidy the messes that accumulate from all the visitors, they take out the garbage while you’re dealing with guests, and if they know you well enough to feel comfortable doing it, they throw in a load of laundry for you so you’ve got clean socks and underwear and towels.
When my dad had his heart attack and bypass operation, people brought us food to the hospital so we could eat something besides slop from the cafeteria and vending machines without leaving him. It helped. It helped a lot.
I just made ‘Casserole’ for the first time after an acquaintance lost her husband at a young age. By ‘Casserole’, I mean mourning food, since it was really cinnamon rolls. The reason I did it, not having been brought up with the tradition, is that the acquaintance is Jewish. When I asked a neighbor if I should go to the memorial service (being only a very loose acquaintance), she said it’s a *mitzvah *to go, and another *mitzvah *to bring prepared food.
I very much like the idea of a mitzvah, or at least the idea that I have that it’s sort of a good deed that is based on one specific action. I haven’t spoken with the acquaintance since the memorial, and I wouldn’t expect her to know it was I who brought it. It was pretty clear that lots of people brought food. It seemed like a lovely way of the community gathering together to comfort the grieving.
It fulfills some of them, but it comes with the added burden that in a time of extra obligations (even if the young man isn’t grieving significantly) it requires him to be social on some level, when he may just really want to get a plate of something and go sit on the sofa and watch some mindless TV, or fill up his stomach and go to bed.
These are the reasons why I’m in favor of the gesture – no one is coming to his house so he won’t have the easy-to-eat food options in place at his house (beyond what he usually keeps on hand, and he may not be in a position to shop) and he has no one else to neglect, but he also doesn’t have anyone in his home who can take care of him and make him a meal, either.
It’s an act of kindness at a time of grief, how is that incorrect?
If the guy doesn’t like it he can say thank you and throw it out. LOL
Even if he wasn’t particularly close to this grandmother, no one’s coming over, he’s not involved with the planning and there’s no one else he’s responsible for feeding, there are still demands on the time of the relatives of the deceased.
He’ll have to make time to get a suit cleaned, a shirt pressed and his shoes shined (at least for most traditional funerals), time for the wake or visitation, time to be with his family and at his age and being male, a little time with the funeral establishment for instructions if he’s tapped as a pall bearer.
I agree with the muffin / quickbread idea. He’ll likely be eating lunch and dinner with his folks, but breakfast will be on the fly.
I think it’s a lovely gesture and one that he’ll probably appreciate at some level.
It’s a very thoughtful gesture. Go for it.
I’m with the muffins/breads school. I was dating my (now) fiancee for only about a month and a half when his grandmother passed away. I didn’t know them well enough, their taste preferences, etc. But everyone will grab a muffin/coffee cake/banana bread slice. It’s easier to please with muffins and quick breads.
When my exboyfriend’s mother died (we broke up fairly amiably) and he had to make an emergency trip to Ohio for the funeral, he asked me to watch his cats because he was in a bind for a petsitter. I left him a big pot of soup I knew he liked to eat for when he got back home. I figured he wouldn’t feel like cooking and I did want to do something nice for him. We were together almost 10 years before we broke up - but I’d like to think I would have done the same for any friend.
I say listen to your boyfriend. He knows the guy. If he says the guy would think it’s weird, take him at his word.
It also doesn’t sound like it was all that devastating a loss to the guy. If I was in that guy’s shoes, and a buddy’s girlfriend showed up with a casserole becuase she heard some family member I wasn’t especially lose to had died, my assumption would be that she was trying to get in my pants.
Not that I necessarily would have objected when I was 22 and single, depending on how hot she was.
I think it’s a nice gesture. I’d say, go for it.
Do it. He’ll appreciate the gesture. Don’t let your boyfriend destroy that custom!
Got it in one. It’s always a nice gesture. Splain it to your BF.
First off, I went straight to the source for this portion of my answer: My boyfriend has a houseguest for the next month or so, a 20-ish guy whose grandmother passed away last week. So I asked the houseguest whether my first inclination would seem weird to him - that inclination being to make a nice, hearty soup/casserole/pasta dish/whatever, and package it into several individual portions, suitable for eating immediately or freezing for later. J, the houseguest, said that he would find that (a) really normal, and (b) really welcome. (For the record, the houseguest is from small town rural Georgia, as am I, so that may color his response to my question.)
As for the reasoning behind providing food, even if your boyfriend’s friend isn’t grieving significantly for his grandmother, he’s a busy young man right now. Aside from all of the “death of a relative” duties that he has going on right this minute, there may have also been a period of time prior to his grandmother’s death during which the family was at the hospital or hospice or nursing care center and had no time to shop for even the basics. So, after a long day of comforting Mom or Dad, or attending a funeral or wake, there may not be any food in the house at two a.m. when he decides he’s really starving. That’s when the chili or ziti in the freezer comes in really handy.
In general, though, when there is a death in my circle of friends/family/close acquaintances, I borrow from my own experience in choosing how to help the family. After my father died, a business acquaintance dropped by with loads and loads of paper plates, napkins, disposable cups, paper towels, aluminum foil, dish detergent, bathroom tissue, and large cans of ground coffee. Everyone and her sister baked a ham or a banana pudding, but only that one person* thought of all these really practical things that a house in mourning needs. That gesture happened when I was a kid, but even today, I always try to bring these sorts of practical items - often without the casserole, but sometimes with, depending on circumstances.
*The person who thought to do all of this was the manager of the grocery store down the street from our house. What really blew me away about this kindness was that no one in my family really even knew him. He had apparently seen me and my brother - ages 9 & 10 when our father died - buying “real” groceries and carrying them home after school, because our mother was tied up at the hospital and there was no one else to shop during our father’s illness. The store manager also allowed us, more than once, to use one of his shopping carts to carry groceries home instead of lugging bags several blocks. I guess he heard about Daddy’s death, and donated paper goods and coffee from the grocery store. On the off chance that a former manager from Piggly Wiggly in Lyons, Georgia is one of this board’s readers, I never got to thank you. You don’t know how much my family appreciated that.
Besides the food doing chores can be very helpful. In the case of one person that had a severe illness the husband had spent months in an RV at the hospital. Many people did yard clean up, and house cleaning duty.
Oh shit, I don’t usually cry at work this early!