Sustenance in Grief

The volunteers who feed the bereaved

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I had just moved across the country to Colorado with my husband when we heard my grandmother was close to death. Hopping in a truck with my parents and nephew, we rushed to get back to Louisiana before the inevitable; we made it home, and Grandma died a few days later. 

After we buried her, our whole huge family gathered at my aunt’s house. Mom had called the church to organize a bereavement meal for us, and someone went to pick it up. Nearly five years later, the details of that day are lost to grief and time, but I remember the fried chicken. I remember being floored at the amount and variety of food there was. I remember sides, multiple main dishes, vegetables, something with potatoes, all of it comforting and familiar, and mostly—if not all—homemade.

“Who made all this stuff?” I asked.

“The church did,” Mom said. 

“How much did it cost?”

“It’s free.”

Many churches across denominations go the extra mile to provide a bereavement meal free of charge for a family after a burial. That extra mile is an operation with several moving parts and requires a small army of dedicated volunteers, who must be free and willing to prepare food at irregular intervals, for multiple families in a day sometimes and occasionally on very short notice. Between their own jobs and family duties, the people who run these ministries choose to stay in the eyes of grief—no easy emotional task—without compensation or recognition, and some of them have been doing it for decades.

When the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church office calls Tee Rinker Campagna, it comes with mixed feelings. “I’ve answered that call before, and it’s been about someone I know who died,” said Campagna. 

Campagna, who has volunteered on the bereavement committee for Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Denham Springs for nearly forty years, has it down to a science. In a Catholic parish that serves over four thousand families, her approach is necessary. 

Campagna is one of four team leaders, who together direct nearly one hundred volunteers explicitly for the purpose of providing food and support to grieving families. Campagna likes to keep around twenty-five people on each of the four teams, and teams alternate to cater to the needs of each funeral and reception. 

That call is never good news, but she never hesitates to answer. The notification will set off a string of dominoes that begins with the notebook Campagna keeps by her phone, by which she will direct one of the teams to prepare a full, travel-ready meal—two meats, a starch, a vegetable or salad, sometimes a casserole, soft drinks, and maybe a dessert—that a family will pick up from the church office in a matter of days. Sometimes the teams get two days to prepare a meal, and other times, they pull it together in one. 

“A lot of times, they’ll call us ahead of time, but if we get in a spot, we can depend on the church to help us,” said Campagna. “They will call a grocery store and get it done.”

No matter where the food comes from, it always ends up in a room near the church office, between 8 and 10 am the day it’s needed, waiting for a family member to pick it up.

Campagna shared that many of the bereavement volunteers at Immaculate Conception come to her because they themselves have been on the receiving end of the service. “A lot of people come to us because they have felt how important it is,” said Campagna. (She initially thought I was calling her to join the committee.)

“It’s very spiritual,” said Campagna. “Sometimes we don’t even know the people, but we treat them the same. We do the same thing for every single person. Sometimes ... the person hasn’t been [in the parish] long enough to register with us, but we don’t turn anyone away.”

... many of the bereavement volunteers at Immaculate Conception come to her because they themselves have been on the receiving end of the service.

Some smaller congregations may have fewer volunteers to work with, but the task is still as necessary. At St. Joachim Catholic Church in Marrero—known locally as “the little church in the woods”—the bereavement committee takes care of funeral needs for the nearly three hundred families in St. Joachim’s congregation. Mary Plaisance heads the three-person bereavement committee with Marjorie Boudreaux and Phyllis Nelkin. The small group, which is occasionally supported by the church’s hospitality committee, has a list of congregants who have signed up to cook a dish for a funeral. When someone passes away, they call down that list to see who’s available to donate a dish.

Marjorie’s niece, Melinda Boudreaux, serves on St. Joachim’s hospitality committee and spoke on behalf of bereavement leader Mary Plaisance to explain their process. Boudreaux explained that, in addition to providing food, the bereavement team attends funeral services, helps with receiving guests, sets up the church reception area for guests returning from the burial, serves the volunteer-made food, and cleans up.

When the reception is held at someone’s home, the team will deliver the food. “They usually make a dish—like someone makes gumbo, potato salad, bread, dessert, drinks,” said Boudreaux. “They’ll take that to the family’s home, and, depending on if they need the help, they’ll stay there, and help serve it.”

“The other day, they had someone pass away in our parish, but their children were from Metairie,” said Boudreaux. “If we gotta go to Metairie or New Orleans, we do. Wherever it is, if it’s one of our parishioners, oh yeah, we’ll go all out for ‘em. We’ll do anything we have to do.” 

At University Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, Patsy Perritt has played a role in the bereavement ministry for nearly fifteen years. “It evolved into a group of women who did everything from greet the people at funeral homes, give them directions, receive flowers,” said Perritt. “Then we were asked to provide some light refreshments for family members when they were having visitations.”

“If we gotta go to Metairie or New Orleans, we do. Wherever it is, if it’s one of our parishioners, oh yeah, we’ll go all out for ‘em. We’ll do anything we have to do.” 

Like most church-organized bereavement ministries, University Baptist’s is volunteer-based, and Perritt is what she calls the “de-facto leader.” She explained that their focus is on what the family specifically needs, which may not always be a meal. “Sometimes they need help at home,” said Perritt. “They have people coming and going, and just need somebody to make coffee and provide cookies and napkins.”

Grief can present in ways not immediately logical to those who aren’t familiar with it, and that’s why Perritt and her team emphasize to grieving people that they will do whatever they need, in whatever manner the bereaved sees fit. Perritt herself understands that nuance from experience.

“My mother died when I was a grown woman, and one church member stepped up and said, ‘I would like to do what you would like [me] to do,’ and at that moment, I said, ‘I do not want any food brought to my house,’ because I emotionally could not deal with that,” said Perritt. “And that person said, ‘Would you like a meal at church? Or I will provide the meal in my home.’ And that’s exactly what I needed, and that was very meaningful to me.” 

Grief can present in ways not immediately logical to those who aren’t familiar with it, and that’s why Perritt and her team emphasize to grieving people that they will do whatever they need, in whatever manner the bereaved sees fit.

With so much to do after a loved one passes, there’s no limit to what can be delegated. “They must speak to the rest of the family members, they have to speak sometimes to their loved one’s employer, their loved one’s friends, the undertaker, they make the arrangements, they have to make sure everyone’s notified of what type of service or significant event will honor this person’s life,” said Perritt.

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“Most faiths think that death is a part of the life cycle, therefore it should be honored, and those people who are left without a loved one in their life, they need to know that people care. Doing this makes me feel like I can help to carry a little bit of the burden.”

The people who do this kind of work don’t do it for recognition—much of the time, not even the recipients end up knowing who stepped up to serve, or what kind of work goes into it. For decades, these volunteers have organized and cooked anonymously because they understand the burden of grief, and the importance of sharing it across many shoulders.

Pat Ho is the coordinator of the Food Ministry at University Presbyterian Church in Baton Rouge, which prepares meals for people going through rough times (not to be confused with UPC’s Funeral Support group run by Mary Mikell, which organizes their congregation’s post-funeral food). Ho shared a quote from a book she once read that resonated with her ministry:

“In the South, if someone is having a hard time—an illness in the family, a new baby—we’d drop by with a casserole, fried chicken, some potato salad. It says without words, ‘I know things are hard right now, so I just wanted you to know that we are thinking of you.’

“And that, to me, is what food is,” said Ho.  

This article originally appeared in the February 2019 issue. Subscribe to our print edition here.