Full Circle Funerals shares Paul Fogarty’s reflections on “caring and remembering with food”

In a recent blog post shared on the Full Circle Funerals website, food writer Paul Fogarty discussed the deep link between food and grief.

In Paul’s words, “When my Uncle Tom died, some years ago, I rang my cousin to offer sympathy and love, to share a few memories and to see if she and her sisters needed any help with the practical details. Coming from a family with an infamously sweet tooth, and knowing my cousin’s particular weakness for cake, I teased: ‘I’m a dab-hand at funeral cake, you know!’ Her response was immediate and positive, and I found myself unexpectedly responsible for some memorial baking.”

Like others in his family, Paul grew up with the idea “that providing for someone is an everyday opportunity to show love”. Paul’s funeral cake became “the perfect expression of a family culture of providing and sharing, of finding joy in sweetness, even when the times are sad ones”. The idea of a funeral cake used to confuse Paul, but it’s come to make more sense to him in time. He said of this transition of thought, “We mark so many important moments with food.”

Recipes for funeral food, Paul believes, were largely lost post-world wars, when “we tried as a culture to minimise all expressions of grief and loss”. But in the last thirty years or so, Paul said, “I have perceived a change.” And now, “Alienated from traditional forms of mourning, people are looking again at how to mark the importance of lives lived well and love that remains.”

For Paul, the rightness of “making a cake to mark [his uncle’s] passing” came down to his own family, and their love of sweet foods. But when doing this on an occasion of one’s own, Paul recommended considering “what foods make sense to you and your experience of loss”, and asking, “Who has fed you, and how? What foods speak to you of the love you’ve known, the joyful memories and stand-out moments? What foods might express your love and care for those who are hurting?” Find out more about Full Circle Funerals via the funeral franchise’s profile page, linked above.