Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

Bringing food to those who mourn is a kind and common practice. Unable to find meaningful words we turn to bread. Once again, its the ancient connection between food and speech: we consume both food and information. When the words cannot be found, we find ourselves looking for deeds to express our concern and care, more often than not turning to the gift of food.

We also know that when we mourn we don't feel much like eating or cooking - except, perhaps, by way of therapy. Feasting is something we associate with celebration; fasting we associate with loss and sorrow. This is the case in the Scriptures as well. Jesus' disciples didn't fast, he told his critics, because 'the Bridegroom' was present: you don't call a fast during a wedding reception, you pass the wine and figs! The days would come, he continued, when he would be gone and then a fast would be appropriate. The departure and palpable absence of the one the disciples loved would naturally lead them to the place of fasting rather than feasting.

"You need to eat a little something", we often hear a comforter say to a mourner. Its true, of course; they do need to eat. Yet the phrase 'little something' is probably the most telling part of the exhortation. Few mourners feel like eating, their taste buds and desires are in a state of shock, together with their heart and thoughts; shared food and wine, always a sign of love, seems terribly incongruent with a world dominated by a love that's lost, by the absence of a person with whom so many meals had been shared. "Empty chairs at empty tables" laments the lover in Les Miserables, 'now my friends are dead and gone.' Indeed. Their tragic, seemingly senseless absence makes a mockery of any note of celebration. We 'eat' our tears instead.

Its why I can't bring myself to do much cooking this week, or write or read or frankly pay much attention at all to culinary wonders. Many of us have lost a dear friend. Its a season of fasting food and trying to find words. Its a season of lament. I know it will pass because its not the first time I've walked through the valley of the shadow. There will be laughter that swallows up the tears that won't stop, and days of feasting greater than the season of fasting. For now, however, my table is empty, my knives are clean and put away, and the best fare I may find is a less than stellar serving of instant grits. Its a time for fasting not feasting.

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/crime-law/austin-woman-teen-killed-in-south-texas-crash/nZTNF/