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Death Casserole
Halle Connors
When someone dies, my family throws together two disposable pans
full of manicotti and makes up a Wal-Mart sack full of bagged salad, French
bread, and paper goods. Then we take it to the family of the newly departed
with our condolences. Manicotti isnt actually a casserole at all, but its close
enough that when I named it Death Casserole the name stuck.
It isnt that I am always flippant about death; however, when you are
forced to make Death Casserole as much as I have in the last year it
becomes easier to adopt a devil-may-care attitude as armor against the gutwrenching, swirling pit of emotions than it is to admit how much you want to
start screaming in the middle of the bagged salad aisle.
----Death is no longer a big thing to me. Death has touched my life so
often in the past year that it has become an extremely tiny thing. Before my
best friends life ended, death was an abstract idea. It was something I knew
I would have to face eventually, but it was still something that I only heard
about on the news and saw in Hallmark movies. It was something that had
touched the fringes of my life, but it wasnt something tangible until Katie
died.
When Katie died, death didnt just touch my life, it slammed into it full
force and head on just like Katies car into the unseen truck. In that moment,
death shrank from being a big idea into a tiny, minuscule thing. Death is
now something small enough to put in my pocket, something small enough
to carry in my heart.
-----

I was unloading a pink stroller from my Hyundai Tucson in the middle of

the crowded Tulsa Zoo parking lot when my life changing moment came and
made my world come crashing down around my feet. The hurried mothers,
the happy children, the yellow school buses blurred as my focus narrowed to
the voice on the phone, Katie was in a wreck. They life-flighted her to Joplin.
She didnt make it. She is dead, Halle. Katie is dead.
----Throughout my life I have given much thought to just how I would
handle a life changing crisis. In those scenarios I was always the hero,
always. I never flinched, I never wavered; I was a stone wall against panic
and disorder.
Several of the imagined scenarios have come to pass in my real life in
one way or another; I am the mother of three children after all and crisis
comes with the territory. I have handled broken bones, bleeding faces,
surgery waiting rooms. The truth is though; I am never a stone wall in a
crisis. I am a crumbled mess of brick and mortar. I wish that I could rise to
meet each challenge with the grace and with the confidence that good will
prevail and that everything will end up right in the end. However, I have
never been the collected one, the patient one, or the calm in the midst of the
storm. That Wednesday in the Tulsa Zoo parking lot was no exception. That
day I was not the calm either; I was the crisis. The crisis was inside of me
tearing its way out of me with such violence that I had never experienced
before or have experienced since.
----When you think about it, its pretty amazing the denial that our brains
can produce. The human brain tries valiantly to protect itself against fear and

grief; it tries desperately to find a happy ending in the midst of crisis. The
five sentences that destroyed my life took less than half a minute to speak
yet the speed at which my brain tried to knit together a bearable conclusion
was dizzying.
Katie was in a wreck.
Thats awful, maybe she is in surgery, maybe she is in a full body cast,
probably her kids will need to stay with us for a few days.
They life-flighted her to Joplin.
That is more serious. Well, I have family in Carthage I can stay with them
and be by her side within a few hours. I bet they would even let her parents
stay with them. I will call them and explain the need, they wont mind.
She didnt make it.
To Joplin? They had to land the helicopter. Were they out of gas?
She is dead, Halle.
What?
Katie is dead.
Ohmygod. Ohmygod. OHMYGOD. OH. MY. GOD.
Except that my pleading with God wasnt contained inside my brain. I
was screaming, I was sobbing; I was trying in vain to muffle my insane
hysteria into my hands. I was trying to stifle the sounds and trying to hide
the horror from the questioning faces of my children peering out of the back
seat windows. I was praying to God that the factory tinting on the Tucsons
windows was enough to shield my children from that moment, to shield them
from the sight of their mother falling to pieces in the middle of the Tulsa Zoo
parking lot.
Throughout that parking lot the rest of the inhabitants were not behind
a shield of factory tinted windows. The happy children stared at me, the
hurried mothers stared at me, and even the school buses seemed to stare at
me. Me, this crazy woman having a mental breakdown in the middle of a
prime parking space.

My husband jumped out of the drivers seat to help me to the curb.

What happened to the phone? Did I finish the conversation with my best
friends mother? I have no idea. I hope that I was polite; I have a vague
memory of her mentioning she needed to call her husband but I have no
recollection of saying goodbye. The next memory I have is of my face buried
into my husbands Robins Egg Blue tee-shirt trying to choke out the words
that Katie, my almost sister, my childrens Godmother, my best friend, my
only friend, had died.
----Its strange to think that we pass by crisis all the time, multiple times a
day probably, and never notice. That thought struck me quick and hard as I
walked through the Tulsa Zoo on that perfect, sunny Wednesday. Literally all
around me were people having fun, laughing, running, screaming with
delight as baby goats licked their hand. And there I was, screaming on the
inside as my life changed irrevocably. I felt as if that lion we saw sleeping
peacefully on the rock was actually inside my chest tearing my heart to
bloody, painful bits.
Does anyone ever notice people around them? Do we ever really see
the people we walk by in airports, in shopping malls, in restaurants, in
crowded zoos? Are we all on the path of our own lives completely oblivious to
crisis happening mere inches from us? That is a terrifying thought. It is
horrifying to think that humans can be so disconnected from one another
that someones life can be falling apart inches from our face and we hurry
past them trying to make our flight or to see the attendants feed the
penguins.

I am not innocent of this by any means. There is no way to know for

certain, of course, but I am sure that I have waltzed by my share of crises
without looking twice. It makes the world seem even bigger than I could ever
realize when I think about how insignificant a personal crisis is in the grand
scheme of things.
Death doesnt matter really; life still carries on. People still rush to get
the best seats at the Sea Lion exhibit clueless of your struggle to navigating
the ramp with a bulky stroller and to field calls from your church family
offering their condolences. It is a large world and the moment that changes
your life is nothing more to a hurried mother and her happy children than a
strange experience of seeing a mentally ill woman having a fit in the Zoo
parking lot.
----Once the hysteria subsided, my husband and I agreed to become the
tinted Tucson windows and shield our children for as long as we could from
the grief that awaited them back home. I know we walked around the zoo
and looked at the animals. I have a photo album to prove it, but the details of
the rest of the day are not neatly slid into plastic covers and dated in my
mind. The details are a giant ball of pictures, tangled and crumpled together.
The only detail I can vividly recall from the rest of that zoo trip is of my kids
and husband on the giraffe deck while I sat on a bench and tried not to
scream obscenities at the oblivious passersby.
Didnt they know I was in agony? Didnt they know that the white hot
vitriol I wanted to spew at them was bubbling right under the surface of my

pressed thin lips? Didnt they know that no one gives a damn about their
stupid giraffe selfies?!
I kept my mouth tightly shut for fear of what might escape and I
searched in vain for a face that looked like I felt, a face that was in the midst
of a crisis. I didnt find one. Maybe they were just hiding it the way I was or
maybe I wasnt actually seeing them after all. Either way, my tight,
padlocked ball of abject horror wouldnt let itself be kept hidden for long. It
finally came undone later that night in the Bagged Salad aisle in Wal-Mart as
I shopped for Death Casserole ingredients.
I know people noticed my agony then. I couldnt have been ignored by
even the most oblivious passersby in the world; my choking, hysterical sobs
wouldnt allow it. I wasnt the hero then, either. I still wasnt the calm, but I
also wasnt the storm. I was the incoherent pile of mess whose husband had
to whisk her out of the store before the straightjacket could be ordered.
----The grief that I felt, and still feel, at the loss of Katie cannot be put into
adequate words. The pain is beyond description; overused similes can never
do it justice. I tried to return to my everyday life after her funeral, but I found
it impossible. I am irrevocably and fundamentally changed; I now have a
dead best friend and that will forever be a part of my identity.
The pain isnt as raw as it once was, of course. It has settled into a
quiet grief that I carry around with me day after day. Its reached the stage
now where it has become part of my daily routine. In the morning before I
leave the house, I pick up my keys, I pick up my phone, and I pick up my
grief. I go to sleep and forget; I wake up and remember.

There are still times, though, that the raw pain rears its ugly, maimed
head; times like when I have to take Katies place as mother to her children
and times like when I made Death Casserole for Katies family again after her
sister died only nine months later. Mostly though, its a quiet thing now; its a
quiet presence at my side. Its a small lump in my pocket that I feel when I sit
down; its a small reminder that there is something there now that didnt
used to be.
----I did think about cooking something different when Katies sister died,
but then I changed my mind. Why ruin another perfectly good meal with the
taint of death? It is bad enough manicotti has to be removed from our
regular meal rotation because we all cry as we eat it; I wouldnt want to ruin
lasagna, too. That would be a true tragedy.
Someday I will have to stop being so flippant about death and face the
swirling pit of emotions shoved deep in the back of my brain. Someday I will
have to accept the fact that Death Casserole is not an appropriate name to
call manicotti. Someday a lot of things. Until someday comes, though, heroic
daydreams and flippancy will have to carry me through.