Lasagna Morgue

A short story around the art of feeding people.

New Message

Let me know if you need anything.

New Message

Whatever you need, tell me and I’ll be there.

New Message

We’re so sorry for your loss. Please let us know if there’s anything we can do.

The messages roll in, steadily at first, before reaching complete crescendo once the news spreads. Death in the age of social media means trying to time when you post about the worst thing that’s ever happened to you to make sure all the right people don’t find out this way. It’s the ‘wrong’ way for some people to learn the news. But there’s no real consensus yet on what is the ‘right’ way.

Sending a text message feels impersonal almost, hidden amongst ‘want to grab a coffee’ and ‘can I borrow your Stan login’. How does one start such a text? ‘Just letting you know Mum died’ reads too flippant. ‘I don’t know how to say this, but I need to let you know Mum died earlier this morning. We were with her so she wasn’t alone, but that in itself is so traumatising and the sound of the death rattle is something I won’t forget for the rest of my life and I don’t think I’ll ever be the same person again’ is bordering on too far.

Every five minutes, my phone pings with a new message, a new condolence, a new performance from people who need to feel like they’ve done something. Charlie’s phone carries the melody as his phone buzzes. He switched to silent but didn’t turn off the vibrate. Exhaustion weighs heavily on me. I can’t even personalise my responses. Truthfully, I’m not even looking at the names. No one sounds like themselves in these messages. So I choose to not sound like myself in my blanket responses.

Reply

Thanks so much, I don’t need anything, but thanks for the offer.

What I wish I could say

I need so many things I don’t know how to name them. I’m scared you’ll be too worried if I unleash the current state of my mind that it’s easier to meet your platitude with a non-response. Something that will make you feel better having asked, but which does nothing to help me.

But in amongst the endless messages are the door bell rings that end with a casserole dish on our door mat. It is a truth universally acknowledged that when you don’t know what to do for someone in your life who is grieving, you offer them a casserole dish filled with lasagna in lieu of speaking to them. Lasagnas are fairly easy to pull together. You can pack them full of nutrients like trying to get vegetables into a picky toddler. They freeze well. And they’re perfectly acceptable to eat on their own.

Very rarely do people knock on the door, even less common are those who stay, almost like they think death is catching. People, it seems, don’t want to sit with those who are grieving. Thank goodness I have Charlie. I’m grateful we didn’t listen when people said it was weird for adult siblings to live together on purpose. Charlie walks to the front door to retrieve the lasagna, this one in a disposable foil dish, bringing it to the kitchen bench where we both stare at it like we’re waiting for it to explode.

‘Any guesses before we start?’ Charlie asks, holding the dish up to his nose and taking in a deep sniff.

‘I’ll be surprised if there’s no zucchini in this one,’ I offer.

‘You can’t even smell zucchini. It’s an un-smellable vegetable.’ Un-smellable isn’t a word and I want to say as much, but sibling bickering feels too heavy these days.

‘Don’t ask how, but I know in my soul it’s in there. What about you?’

Charlie sniffs again. ‘Definitely a blasphemous one. Bocconcini lining the top for sure.’

Every time another lasagna is dropped on our doorstep, we take turns guessing what it will taste like before removing the foil and assessing the impact. It’s something we used to do with Mum’s cooking when we were kids and she’d make her Dinner Surprise, which we now realise was her attempt at cutting down on food wastage. We take only the smallest of portions so we can appropriately rate it. Our freezer has become a morgue of lasagnas. We haven’t been hungry, but people continue to leave them on our doorstep.

‘I swear people see white cheese and think mozzarella and bocconcini are interchangeable,’ Charlie says.

‘Remember when someone used cottage cheese instead of bechamel?’ We both shudder.

We sliced the smallest amount possible that could be considered adequate for that creation. Of course this meant it lasted longer but we couldn’t stomach more in each sitting than what we already committed to.

The most egregious one so far was the person who snuck in halved Brussel sprouts, just one layer, right in the centre. If the Italians knew their signature dish was defiled in this way, I’m certain they would have waged a war. They’ve been started over less.

Charlie removes the foil to reveal a layer of bocconcini on top. ‘Told you,’ he says with a smirk. He’s getting too good at this.

When the microwave finishes its rotation and beeps in announcement, my entire body tenses. I am no longer in my kitchen with my brother about to eat a slice of lasagna. I am in the hospital room next to our Mum, listening to the beeping monitors that tell us she hasn’t slipped through the veil just yet.

Charlie places his hand over mine, bringing me back to the present. His eyes are wrinkled around the sides. He has aged so much in the past few weeks, we both have. He takes a deep breath, his signal to encourage me to do the same, to bring me back to where my feet are. I’m not in the hospital. I’m not watching it happen again. I’m in our home, about to eat lasagna with my brother.

In the first bite, my teeth round something bitter and unexpected. I pull a dried bay leaf out of my teeth and hold it up to show Charlie. Charlie shakes his head in surprise. We dissect each bite, trying to discover what ingredients were used in this offering. Nutmeg, definitely. Oregano, perhaps. It’s easier to focus on the recipe than it is to think about why someone gave it to us in the first place. Easier to become a lasagna connoisseur than to be an aficionado of grief.

Easier to judge an old school friend who left us a lasagna with a note saying to keep the casserole dish, that she collects them for precisely this purpose. If I bothered to check social media, I just know she would have posted about it. A way to say “look at how wonderful I am! I cook grief lasagnas so regularly I even have a usual process I follow, including this dish which I’ve thrifted and will leave as a way for people to remember my generosity”.

Has it never occurred to her that I’m less likely to remember the meal, more the people who sit alongside me in my grief, those willing to set aside their own discomfort so I’m not forced to sit in mine alone? Is anyone beside my brother actually going to allow me to voice the pain that hangs heavy in my chest or will they keep force feeding me lasagnas until enough time has passed that they think they can get away with saying nothing at all?

‘This one is a solid 3,’ Charlie says, breaking the silence.

Our rating system goes up to five, meaning this is neither the best nor the worst we’ve had.

‘Points off for the bay leaf.’ It’s only fair.

Charlie nods and writes on a fluorescent green post it note 2.5 - bay leaf incident.

I will be grateful to never see another lasagna again in my lifetime.

We cover it in foil and into the morgue it goes.