How to comfort a grieving loved one

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try such an experiment if I could get my mother to agree to it.Amused—or perhapstouched—bymypassion,she signedon.

I then presented the plan to my mother. Shewas in the habit of opposing most things I expressed a desire forandwasfairlyvigilant aboutour religious observances. I thought she would be against the idea on the grounds of its possibly messing up the ornate laws of kashruth. But something in her must have responded to the lengths I had gone to—and perhaps she herself had had her appetitewhetted. Shewas amenable.

A few days later I brought everything thatwas needed next door, and Dolores set herself to making a dish that shewas infinitely familiarwith but that I knewwould taste revelatory to me and my family. Sure enough, Dolores’s meatballs and saucewere highly flavoredinawayIva’sfoodwasn’t,and my family—including my father,who seemed to have momentarily forgottenhis aversion to garlic—devoured every last speck.Although everyone in the family appeared to like it, no one seemed particularly curious about the meal or the Buzzellis in general. In some immediate, culinary sense, the experimentwas a resounding success, but in another, larger sense, I felt like a solitaryvoyager between two planets, that of my Orthodox Jewish family and that of the Italian Catholic onenextdoor.

The decades have passed, and both my family and the Buzzellis are long gone from that leafy block inAtlantic Beach. I, meanwhile, continueto cultivate friendships, both old and new, never having forgotten how good it felt to forge a sustaining connection with our neighbors that summer in the mid-1960s—how it helped open up theworld to me.Although my parents have died, I maintain close links tosomeofmysiblingsandremainin touchwith all of them.But somewhere along theway, I translated my mother’s notion of mishpocha into a more extended concept than she intended, with results that have enlarged my circle and enriched my heart— allowing me to step into other people’s lives theway I stepped into the Buzzellis’blue-tiledkitchenlong ago.

In some immediate, culinary sense, the experiment wasa resounding success, but in another, larger sense, I felt like a solitary voyager between two planets, that of my Orthodox Jewish family and that of the Italian Catholic one next door.

About the author

Daphne Merkin is a novelist and cultural critic. Her essays have been published in two collections, Dreaming of Hitler and The Fame Lunches. Her latest book, This Close to Happy: A Reckoning with Depression, is out from Farrar, Straus and Giroux this month.