I recently buried my father. It was an emotional day, one of the worst I’ve ever experienced. I spent the service going between my siblings, comforting them and making sure they had tissues and hankies to wipe their tears.
I smothered them with hugs, made them drink water and told them everything is going to be okay.
It was all a lie. Nothing was okay with what we were dealing with. I wasn’t okay. Hidden behind my mask and a huge pair of sunglasses, the tears were rolling down. I cried, silently, as I comforted them.
As the service continued, with various speakers all taking their sweet time, there was one thing that comforted me and no, it wasn’t the eulogy. I was zoned out when the priest was doing the service. Besides, I felt like it was so impersonal, like he didn’t know my father.
The one thing that gave me comfort was the wafting smell of the food being prepared. From a distance I could smell the beef curry. From the smell alone I knew it was going to be a pot of spicy masala deliciousness.
The cinnamon used for the butternut was also in the air. I secretly wondered if they were going to roast some chicken or make it into a curry.
Not that anyone ever wants to have chicken curry at a funeral. It’s normally given to someone who can’t cook really well.
I thought it was strange having to seek comfort in food, but I kept thinking back how over the years funeral food has always been the one thing that made one feel a bit better after a funeral. Most times, we are in so much pain that talking about how delicious the food is makes us forget about what we are going through.
I remember going from the graveyard to the marquee and fixing myself a plate. The glutton in me had overtaken every other emotion. I needed that beef curry, rice, butternut, beetroot, potato salad and coleslaw ASAP. I didn’t want to talk about what had just occurred. I just wanted to eat.
There’s something about funeral food that just stands out. I asked my mother about it and she explained that funeral food will always be top tier because those who are cooking, are mostly cooking with love.
“They are thinking about the pain the family is going through and how the best way to show support and respect is to make sure that the food is delicious,” she said, as we drove back to Durban earlier this week.
Looking back, this is true. The whole week, while preparing for the funeral, there were various neighbours coming to cook, and sharing the workload with other members of the family. I now realise that the best way they could show how sorry they were for our loss was to make sure that the food they cooked did all the comforting that they couldn’t give us.
As I tucked into that plate of deliciousness, I did momentarily forget my trauma. You would have, too, if you were tucking into the most delicious and hearty beef curry you have ever eaten.
* Buhle Mbonambi is editor of Insider, which is published inside the Saturday Star, Weekend Argus, Pretoria News Weekend, Sunday Independent, Independent on Saturday and Sunday Tribune.