The hall is set for a celebration … Holly-berry red tablecloths with snowman centerpieces cover round tables, enough for 150 people.
The family came early to set up displays of photos and memorabilia including a set of U.S. Navy blues that had once fit the slender frame of a kid who joined up in ‘42 right out of high school.
The aroma of baking ham and scalloped potatoes wafts from the nearby kitchen. Women stomp snow from their boots as they come in from the parking lot. They cradle large bowls of salads with the tenderness usually awarded only to an infant.
The pastor and musicians are preparing to feed the souls of grieving family and their guests even as the funeral team in the kitchen is preparing another form of nourishment.
Good things will happen here today.
Family squabbles will be set aside. Old friends will reminisce. Grief will ease. Conversation will flow easily over a plate filled at a buffet laden with food prepared from time-honored recipes.
Writer and storyteller Garrison Keillor describes church suppers at length in his fictional monologues about Lake Wobegon. He is eloquent on the subject of Jell-O molds with tiny marshmallows, creamed onions swimming in elegant china bowls and the churchwomen who are the source of it all.
Keillor’s fiction is art reflecting life as it has been in America for centuries.
But as the women in the kitchen grow older and older and lifstyles change, I wonder how long this tradition will survive. When will church suppers just be memories of past times captured in a storyteller’s imagery of small-town life?
I am one of the youngest on the funeral team. Our leader, at 78 a veteran of more than 60 years of church supper duty, has been in the kitchen since 10 a.m. She just popped a pain pill for her arthritis.
Because her team is shorthanded, the recipe on the wall of the pantry for “funeral scalloped potatoes” has been ignored in favor of a stack of box mixes she assembled early and popped in the ovens a little before 1 p.m.
Other traditions have also been set aside for convenience. The ham is precooked and sliced. It needs only a modest reheat. The rolls and sheet cakes came from Costco.
A successful church supper always relies on willing hands and perfect timing.
An hour before the service, our team sits briefly to drink lukewarm coffee (the pot’s not fully perked and shouldn’t be until the service is almost over).
Jackie feels nostalgic. Fifty years ago, church women raised the money to supply the kitchen with equipment by hosting a businessman’s lunch, she says.
“We were pretty famous for our chicken casserole so it was easy to sell tickets. Well, one year they sold so many tickets, I didn’t have a bowl big enough to make the salad.
“I ran over to Sprouse-Reitz and bought a new garbage can. We washed it real good. I was busy mixing up that salad when the health department arrived. I had to show them the receipt to prove it was new. We were afraid they’d stop the luncheon, and that was our big moneymaker for the year,” she says.
We reward her tale with soft laughter.
The first guest is an hour early and quite elderly. I show him the display of his friend’s pictures and uniform. Soon, he is lost in memories.
Back in the kitchen, I cut cake in two-inch squares and place the pieces on small paper plates.
Even with a commercial dishwasher, doing dishes when 150 folks dine is simply too much for a funeral team of six.
We know the Lutherans down the street still use their china and bring out the silver tea service for funeral suppers, but we Methodists have come to accept our limitations.
Our tables are set with the good silverware and large napkins, but our guests eat from paper plates.
The sanctuary is full.
The pastor in the pulpit is known for giving good funerals. His one-hour service is now at 90 minutes.
Finally, the organ booms out the last hymn.
Cold salads to the buffet first. Then the ham, scalloped potatoes and rolls.
As the family emerges, surrounded by friends, they enter a fellowship hall prepared just for them. This supper is an act of love given to offer comfort in a time of loss. A loss we all have known and will know in the years ahead.
They will leave in an hour or two with a box or two of leftovers in recycled plastic containers.
“Thank you,” they say.
Weary old women, elbows deep in soap suds and large pans, will smile and reply, “We were glad to be able to do this for you.”
Yes, good things happened here today.
Old women will sleep well tonight.
Linda Bryant Smith writes about life as a senior citizen and the issues that concern, annoy and often irritate the heck out of her now that she lives in a world where nothing is ever truly fixed but her income. You can e-mail her at ljbryantsmith@yahoo.com.
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