Chicken says: "Please don't abuse me."

Food is much more than just calories and nutrients and chemicals. Food is more often an experience, and certain foods are connected to certain emotions. The first thing I want after a bad day is a big, hot platter of my mom's Provolone Chicken and Brown Rice, or my tiny Ukranian grandma's pyrohy (giant dumplings filled with onions and mashed potato, fried in a pan with butter and served with sour cream - the closest thing to both heaven and a heart attack).

This weekend I attended a funeral. Funerals are always sad, no matter your proximity to the person who is being honored. In our Catholic, Chicago-based family, it's tradition to gather in a basement banquet room of The Rose Garden restaurant in Elk Grove Village, following the long days of mourning, a wake and an intense church service.

Now would be the time for food that fills your soul, that reminds you of one of the things the dead will miss about life, and (if you believe in it) is a never-ending part of the wonderful afterlife. I left The Rose Garden feeling empty and having little faith in life on Earth and beyond.

Sorry, that's a little dramatic, but you have to remember I just came from a Catholic funeral, which can make everything seem a little more somber and sinful. The fact of the matter was the food sucked. The waiters half-heartedly plopped down plates filled with rubbery, pale chicken, sprinkled with a mysterious red spice that added no flavor but another reason to pass on the poultry. Thin strips of bland beef, mashed potatoes that sat in my stomach like cement. Gravy that (I swear) glowed orange. And tasted suspiciously like the sweet potatoes you find in eeny-weeny jars of baby food.

It always makes me sad when good food is used badly. But what brings me down a lot more is that the people around me, the friends and family who had just lost someone they love and will miss deeply, found no extra comfort in the food. It's a comfort they might not even realize they are missing, but if they had found it, they would have felt it.

I don't think a lot of people think about the meal that people will share at their funeral. In the back of my head, I'm slowly keeping a list of the dishes that I want people to enjoy as they celebrate my life and think about me. I want them to find comfort in the meal, but also I know they will associate me, my life and my death with this meal, and I (selfishly) want the association to be good.

Morbid? Definitely. Necessary? I think so.