Funeral Egg Salad
i haven’t written anything in a long time - i could make a bunch of excuses, but what it really came down to was that my head was spinning so much that i lost interest in almost anything that i used to enjoy. Those of you who know me or who follow me on twitter have probably noticed the lack of talking about food, tweeting pictures of the newest one-ified recipe that i’ve created, and generally, lack of communicating in any way.
it’s been an odd time for me since February - a lot of change happened, and while that’s ok, it does get to be a little overwhelming. there was something that happened at the end of April that really hit me though, and it was that unexpected tragedy that made me realize (although not right away) that even through complete messed up chaos that there are some things that are always there, remaining unchanged throughout it all - in this case, “funeral egg salad”.
you don’t expect to hear about someone you know on the news. you really do not expect to hear about them as a missing person. it was an odd situation and i am not sure i knew how to process what i heard. this person who i had worked with for years, who decided to quit just months before in a very odd way, was now missing....and the part that made absolutely no sense was that she was such a creature of habit that everyone knew this would not end well - there was no way that she had just gone missing. i was at work when i heard that they had found her body - no one knew how to react - i am pretty sure i watched 20 people go through all the stages of grief all within 20 minutes. people were angry, confused, thinking it was not true - everyone wanted details but the only news reports we had just said that her body had been found.
days passed before we had any answers, and even then, things don’t completely make sense to any of us. she was found in a river, it looks like she slipped, maybe hit her head, it was after a big storm so the water was rushing, and she would have been wearing a jacket...winter clothes are heavy when wet. it’s not something that happens to people you know - it happens to strangers on the news.
her funeral was hard but it was the reception afterwards that made me think about things that you can trust to always be there even nothing else is or makes sense. every funeral i have ever been to always has little egg salad sandwiches on white bread. always. i am not sure that it is a “thing”, they just always seem to be there. a comforting food, a standard, normal thing that is always there when the world is a scary, unreal, chaotic place.
my world is changing a lot right now - in the past the chaos of it all would have lead me to not eat, live off coffee, forget completely about self care and although i did find myself sipping into old habits, i realized that it’s like the funeral egg salad, food heals, food comforts, it is something that is always needed, no matter how messed up or crazy life becomes. a little thing that helps bring routine back. a simple sandwich that stands for so much.
loss is random, but enviable, the egg salad at funerals are an established constant. always there, always the same.