alt Hacker NewsWhen someone's spouse has died, a very helpful thing to do is to cook and package and deliver meals that the surviving spouse can simply place in the fridge and warm up as needed. When you are grieving, to actually prepare a meal is a terribly, terribly difficult thing to do.
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The best thing I've found is to ask what they need help with, then do that thing for them. One time when we just brought food (by traditional and assumption, without thinking too hard about it), it ended up being more frustrating for the people receiving it then intended.
From the article: “One of the neighbors actually cooked for me for four years — dinners — and her husband delivered the dinners to me."
I winced at that. 4 years.
Same advise exactly for a newborn. It was incredibly helpful for us, and now we love doing it for others.
I find it fitting the approach for new life and death can be the same.
The nice thing about that is that you don't have to ask how you can help, you can just help. I knew a guy who would go to a grieving household and clean their shoes.
It's true. And technically many of them can afford takeout when it's too hard. But there's something healing about someone, whether family or friends, actually doing the act of helping in this way. It's a sort of transfer of love from one heart into another, which heals the broken one. The more of a sacrifice it costs the one giving help, the more healing efficacy it seems to have, even if the amount is unknown to the person receiving help. It's almost magical.
I might be a bit weird about this but… the chances of somebody making something that I want to eat is pretty small. I don’t like eating food from a non-commercial kitchen that I haven’t seen.
If you want to feed me, give me a DoorDash or Uber gift card.