Post-funeral meals

Came across this interesting article on post-funeral meals of the different ethnic groups. Did you know that in New York, food is not allowed to be taken to the funeral home? The New York state law prohibits the "preparation, sale, service, or distribution of food or beverages in any part of a funeral establishment to or by friends, relatives, mourners, family, visitors or next of kin of any deceased person."

He Would've Wanted Everyone to Eat
By ABE OPINCAR
Published: August 10, 2005
The NY Times

VERTAMAE GROSVENOR said she always wondered why she and her relatives ate so much after funerals.
"Even people on diets just ate plate after plate," Ms. Grosvenor, a cultural correspondent for National Public Radio, said about postfuneral meals in South Carolina, where she grew up. "My theory was, we ate so much because that's how we knew we were alive."


Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Funeral meals have always meant to assuage grief and to honor the dead and their beliefs about the hereafter. In America these meals also reflect ethnicity, health trends, state law and contemporary funeral practices.

But feeding the grieving also has a fundamental aim, said Dr. Holly Prigerson, a bereavement specialist.
"You can't be noshing when something's chasing you," said Dr. Prigerson, director of research at the Center for Psycho-Oncology and Palliative Care at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard Medical School. She said C. S. Lewis was right when he wrote, "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."

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