Essay-ish: A kiss and a ham sandwich for the road

Friends stayed at my house on Friday night. I was a stopping point for their trek to a wedding further west the next evening.

We did what one should do in Chicago — eat. After a subpar experience at a restaurant with too-kind Yelp reviews and duck fritters that might have just been chicken maybe(?), we decided to walk around and wing it.

That’s always when the best things happen.

We ended up at a Thai restaurant that we smelled a block away. The weather was lovely, so the place had its sidewalk-to-ceiling windows open and the scent of spicy chili noodles, curried meats, and delicate fried crab drew us toward it. I don’t even know if we walked there or floated on the fumes, mouths agape.

The only reason we made it out of there with leftovers was because we had eaten beforehand. The next morning, I packed the cartons into a brown paper bag for my friends to take with them on their drive. I included some fruit, a few donuts, and plastic silverware I’d saved from long-forgotten takeout trips.

Before they drove away, they thanked me for taking care of them. It was nothing, I said. And really it wasn’t. It was just love by way of clean sheets and a packed lunch.

I thought of all this today as I tried to write a few lines for my grandma’s obituary, the use of which is quickly approaching.

It’s comforting that my family, like me, turns to getting work done in moments of sadness or overwhelming emotion; one might consider preparing photos for the funeral and an obituary for the newsmen before my grandma actually passes as morbid or denying in-the-moment grief, and maybe it is a little bit.

But I prefer to think we’re proactive. Realistic. Farmers. Doing this work now makes logistics easier when the real loss hits. Work is where we find solace — it’s the only thing we can control. And taking control of our own lives and experiences is a way to honor the lives of the family who worked so hard before us.

I get my callous work ethic honest.

As I do my enjoyment of hosting.

A line I wrote for grandma’s article (one of only a few I could actually muster):

“Carolyn was as quick with a comeback as she was a homemade sandwich for your journey home after a visit.”