How Stirring the Pot Helps Us Grieve Well

Inside: A helpful metaphor that shows how important it is to speak our grief—to sort through our memories and feelings out loud in the presence of compassionate listeners. ~

The week after Christmas, five of my family’s seven siblings were in town. This was the first time since our parents’ funerals in 2019 that this many of us were this close to where we all grew up.

We had a couple of big dinners at my home—Asian night, to honor our family members of that ethnicity, and Italian night, to remember the legacy of good cooking that our mom passed down to us.

Getting Ready

The day before our Italian supper, I made a big pot of my mom’s spaghetti sauce, along with her amazing meatball recipe, and put it in the fridge until it was needed.

When reheating a big pot of sauce, you have to keep it on the stove long enough to warm it through, but not at such a high temperature that it gets overcooked. The problem was, we’d recently gotten a new range and I wasn’t familiar with how each of the burners worked.

I also didn’t stir the sauce nearly enough as I should have.

Oops

In the process of warming up the pot, the sauce on the bottom scorched badly. Thankfully, it was still edible, despite the slightly acrid taste that permeated most of it.

The pot, however, was another story. After soaking it overnight and boiling a mixture of vinegar and baking soda in it, I expended significant amounts of time and energy chipping chunks and layers of burned sauce off the bottom.

I finally got it clean. I also learned my lesson.

Stirring the Pot

The next time I made sauce, I turned the stove to the lowest setting and stirred the pot every 20 minutes for three hours.

When I emptied the sauce into a slow cooker so Molly could take it to school for a robotics team dinner, the bottom of my stock pot was sparkling silver. There wasn’t a speck of burned material anywhere.

Turns out, stirring the pot makes all the difference.

And not just when it comes to cooking.

Poignant Metaphor

The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said, “There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.”

He was right, I think.

When we do the opposite—talk or perhaps write about loved ones we have lost—it’s like stirring a pot of sauce simmering on the stove. Sorting through our heavier memories and feelings out loud keeps all the bits and pieces from sinking to the bottom and scorching the pot, metaphorically.

Speaking Grief

Letting the “grief speak,” to borrow Longfellow’s language, allows us to incorporate our thoughts into a somewhat-cohesive mental stew. This can happen many places: over coffee with friends, in the comfort of our own living rooms, in a counselor’s office or at a grief support group.

It doesn’t change what happened, but it helps us process it in a healthy way.

My parents often come up in normal conversation with my husband and daughters. Nothing is off limits, from strengths and weaknesses to endearing traits and idiosyncrasies. We share what we miss about them, tell jokes my dad would have enjoyed, mention if they would have loved this song or that event. (My friend Linda describes this practice well here.)

A Better View

We don’t view my mom and dad through rose-colored glasses. But our lenses are tinged with the realization that what might irritate us when our loved ones are with us pales in comparison with how much we miss them when they’re gone.

April 19 marks the four-year anniversary my mom’s heavenly homegoing. A valuable part of my grief journey has been writing about losing her (and my dad, five weeks later). I appreciate all of you who have read along—the whole time or perhaps just recently—with compassion and understanding.

You’ve helped me stir the pot, and I’m so thankful.

If you’ve lost a loved one—recently or long ago—and would like someone to remember that person with you, please share in the comments. Speak your grief, and we will be blessed to listen.

♥ Lois

P.S. I’m linking up this week with One Word 2023,  #tellhisstory, InstaEncouragements, Recharge Wednesday, Let’s Have Coffee and Grace & Truth.