Pasta
When you hear the word Italian food what comes to mind?
For me, it is pasta. Pasta heaped up on a plate with delicious sauce poured over the top and running down the “legs” of the pasta noodles. Heaps of cheese on top and the art of winding the noodles around the fork using a spoon to get just the right bite. Oh…and good wine. Preferably red.
When I was raising my kids on a very small budget, it meant comfort food, quick, easy, inexpensive and messy but delicious.
If I asked you what comes to mind when you hear the word Italian food, I wonder what the answer would be?
In the Italian culture pasta doesn’t just mean food. It means family time together. Older generations spend hours mixing, kneading, rolling and cutting out pasta dough. They pass on family traditions and spend quality time with each other making the pasta, then take their time to eat together.
A week or so ago, I messaged my sweet friend Ms. Weslie and asked how she was doing. She knew exactly what I meant. I wasn’t looking for platitudes or “I’m fine”. She knew I truly wanted to know how she was handling the days, the minutes, the silence, the loss. See, she lost someone she loves very much and has been walking though her own complicated grief.
Her reply was “I feel like a bowl of spaghetti with the noodles all going in different directions. I seek a path to follow.” I could feel and see her journey intimately.
Grief…like a bowl of spaghetti? I love it! I immediately could relate to her!
Spaghetti…It’s original form is linear, orderly, packaged neatly and the broken pieces in the box do not necessarily change the outcome of the dish. You cannot taste the pasta uncooked, it is not in it’s fully edible state or ready for consumption until it is dropped in boiling water.
Like pasta, we are not fully prepared for grief and then we are dropped in the boiling water of loss. How did we get here? The finished product a sticky, jumbled mess of emotion waiting in the strainer at the bottom of the sink.
Our grief spaghetti bowl looks like so many emotions entwined with all the other emotions. Some days we wind the spoon and joy is what holds the noodles together. Other times sadness, anger, numbness. We can cover it with fancy sauce, but the reality is, it is still there.
Sticky. Sometime stuck to other noodles, no clear path to take to get through the plate of healing.
Never forgetting, but leaning on the healing touch of Jesus and each other as we work through the tangled mess of spaghetti noodles that threaten to leave us stuck in a tangled emotion of grief.
Much love,
Chrissy
This post was inspired by my beautiful friend Ms. Weslie! Her vulnerability and light have helped all of us work toward healing.