My husband and I have both lost our mothers within a six month period. That's pretty weird. They were not very old (and my mother-in-law's passing was unexpected) and of course this makes us ponder the important things in life, like, well, LIFE. It's also making me ponder something else very important: casseroles. Karen and I convinced ourselves that nobody brought us a casserole when our mom died because we had to immediately fly out of state and were in a hotel so there was no wake or anything. Where would we put a casserole? Jewish funerals happen in 3 days and there's no time to make a casserole! But on TV, when someone dies, there's always a comforting casserole and a pie! We wanted that. We love casserole. We are old school. Instead we ate out a lot. When my mother-in-law died, I thought this would be the big casserole event! My husband has a huge family of non-Jews! Someone will bring us a casserole while we make funeral arrangements!
The other day while we were having lunch at McDonald's, while trying to figure out where we would feed the local guests who attended the funeral, we wondered what happened to the great custom of casserole bringing over. Since when is a funeral an event where the sad children have to feed the attendees? Isn't a gathering where you feed people kind of not specifically a funeral? What the hell happened to tradition? Are TV funerals as fake as TV sex scenes?
If I die before my husband and my siblings, please bring over a casserole and a warm artichoke dip. Dustin likes his artichoke dip with extra green chilies and Karen likes cheesy casseroles. She also prefers her tuna casserole without peas. That hashbrown casserole is a crowd pleaser. In all my free time, I will bake the lemon bars everyone likes and put them in the freezer. Somebody look in there and defrost those. Just put them on a paper plate, no need to be all fancy about it. I don't want my loved ones to have to realize that the Casserole Thing at funerals is the Santa and Easter Bunny of mortality. Please tell me our experiences are just flukes and the Casserole Thing does exist somewhere.
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