In the south we knew how to grieve. Our grieving isn’t as well documented as the Irish wake or the Jewish family sitting shiva, but it was every bit as ritualized. With the Irish, the identification was whiskey, and with the Jews, it was covering mirrors and tearing garments.

We had food.

When I was growing up I had the feeling that no death was official until the neighbors descended onto the house bearing food. In Benson, it took no time for the word of a death to reach everybody around, and only a little more than that before the women trooped in carrying fried chicken, ham, potato salad, various vegetables, and cakes and pies.

And there were usually one or more green bean casseroles. They were straight out of several cans: Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, canned green beans, and French’s fried onions. I’ve never met anybody who admitted liking green bean casseroles, but they were always there.

The people always brought more food than anybody could eat that day and for several days after that. Then some people would come back with a second load. Almost inevitably there would be food left after all the people were gone, and it would have to be thrown out.

But it had served its purpose. It allowed the people who cared about the family’s grief to actually do something. Looking back on it I don’t believe that eating the food was nearly as important as bringing it. A death in a friend or neighbor’s family leaves us with very little that’s useful to do and almost nothing to say, but the women could always cook.

Along with the food usually came one or two people who stepped in and took over the logistics. They told people where to put the food, they answered the phone, and they shuffled people away from the immediate family after allowing a reasonable time for conveying their condolences. When my dad died, it was my Aunt Hazel who took over. She and my family were related in a variety of ways. She was mother’s cousin, and she married daddy’s brother; so she was my first cousin, once removed as well as my aunt.

Her relationship with my family had run hot and cold over the years, but when dad died, she was among the first there and the last to leave, and the fact that she answered the phone when I called made me feel like we were in good hands. She was the second person I spoke to after I got home, mother being the first.

For several days the food was always there, ready for anybody who came to the house. It was what the women did.

The men had a more difficult time showing their care and concern. Some went to a good barbecue place and picked up barbecue and hush puppies. Some came to make sure the chairs from the funeral home were put out. Some brought bags of ice for the sweet tea. But mostly there wasn’t a lot for the men to do. However, they always showed up at the funeral home.

Sometime before I was born they quit laying out the deceased at home. I’m grateful that tradition got consumed by the funeral director business. By the time I had to take my place in the lines filing by the caskets, the departed were always in a room at the funeral home, soft music playing in the background. People stood in the room with the casket or on the porch, talking softly. Occasionally you’d hear laughter.

This time, the next to the last time I was in that funeral home, daddy was the one that everybody had come to pay their respects to. Being the oldest son, my job was to help receive the people when they came and acknowledge their condolences. It’s hard to do when you haven’t had time to tend to your own grieving or your family’s, but we did what we were supposed to do.

I remember one encounter during that evening. I had stepped out on the porch for a moment and a man I knew came up to me. He shook my hand, shook his head, and said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do when my oven breaks, now.” My first reaction was, “I don’t know what I’m going to do without a father,” but I just nodded. After he had walked away I understood what had just happened. In his own way, his grief was just as real as mine, and he had expressed it in the most personal way he could.

Death is too big for us. It leaves us feeling helpless and powerless; so we invent ways to show the living that we do care, that’ll we’ll do what we can to help them keep going. It may be fried chicken, or it may be just showing up at the funeral home and saying something.

As inane as the words may sound when they come out of our mouth at times like that, they say in some way that the person in the casket was important to us and that we’re sad, hurt, and sorry that that person’s gone.

I’ve been through several of these times now, and each time I learned to appreciate more what it meant to those who grieve. I’m not sure that the tradition will last much longer, at least in a city like Atlanta, not only because everybody lives such busy lives, but because so many of the people we know aren’t from around here, and they don’t know from green bean casserole, much less fried chicken. But I hope it doesn’t go away before I do.

It’s a big help to those who are left.