Funeral Dinner Baked Beans

Did you know grief has potluck recipes?

I’m sure it has many. This was just the one I made.

• 4 cans Bush’s Baked Beans (undrained, unlike your tear ducts right now)

• 1 package of bacon

• Yellow mustard (??)

• 1 medium onion

• 3-ish tablespoons brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 350°, or don’t. I don’t care, and it probably won’t matter.

This recipe is almost a mockery of one, because it’s kind of obvious.

Open the beans. Dump them into a deep baking dish.

(You can only hope it’s deep enough. Emotionally, I mean.)

Cut the uncooked bacon with kitchen shears. Toss it in.

Stir or don’t. Either you will (you won’t), or someone else will later.

Slice the onion and add it not because you want to,

but because people expect it.

(You give them this, because there are so many things you just won’t.)

Add brown sugar depending on your audience.

Mostly Northerners? Go heavy. Southerners will notice. Let them.

Eyeball the mustard. Maybe a tablespoon.

It’s the thing nobody notices but everyone would miss.

Bake for an hour. Stir. Bake another 30 minutes or so,

until it looks like it’s been through something. (Like you.)

Just make sure the bacon gets cooked. That part matters.

If everyone gets home alive, you did it right.

It doesn’t matter that every step felt like ten.

You’re back in the kitchen. That counts.

Buy some rolls. Two Bundt cakes.

That’s your funeral contribution.

Let the others bring what they will. 

Your dad always made the baked beans.

This isn’t his recipe. That’s one thing you’re not sharing.

And yes—I’ve seen Waitress.

Afterword: Notes from the Quiet Hours

Last night, I wrote some poems.

• Bed Rotting 1 (Bog Bodies)

• Grading Papers with Godot

(Spoiler: He never shows. Greek gods and sneezing may be involved.)

• Panic Breathing

(I’m panicking even contemplating sharing that one.)

• Bed Rotting (Stanley Cup, er…mug? edition)

• Invisible Syllabus

(Superheroes were deployed.)

• One untitled, written after our funeral flowers were misdelivered.

This morning, the poetry vending machine has a quarter stuck in its innards.

Maybe Word Raccoon can dislodge it later, if she hasn’t left me for good.

I fell asleep to Portrait of a Lady and woke up to find Isabel had wandered into a whole new world. Same, lady, same.

Had to go back three chapters.

Last night, I got to see one of my favorite cousins.

I hate that we only see each other at these things. I told him so.

The flowers, once they found their way to us, were beautiful.

My mom would have loved the snapdragons.

I think I forgot to pay the bills. Thankfully most are on autopay.

More later, maybe.

I’ve needed to write, although I feel the quiet overtaking me now.

It kinda feels like I imagine 

An ice bath feels. 

Is it too late to say

I wish you were here?