When someone close to you is dealing with one of the many unfortunate events life likes to throw at us – an illness in the family, care giving for someone terminally ill or death (or a few of the happy ones like bringing home a new baby), it’s not uncommon to wonder what you can do for them.

This post is just meant to be some of my own observations from this past spring about things people did for my family that were awesome and a few things that were totally well meant, but missed the mark.

And, please don’t consider me an ungrateful cow, we really did appreciate everything everyone did for us, it’s just that, personally, I would like to be as helpful as possible in the reverse situation. Although my family still laughs about the Dunkin Donuts thing… at least it’s funny now.

#1. Don’t send junk food.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good Boston Cream Donut. But the fact is that when my family was fending for ourselves, we ate a lot of crap. Trust me, without anyone’s help, when we were collapsing exhausted at the end of the day, all we did was order pizza and take out.

Like everything happening in our home wasn’t depressing enough, we were now also getting fat.

There was a wave of a week straight when people brought us Dunkin Donuts.

• Day 1: Oh, donuts. Thanks!
• Day 2: Hmmm. Donuts. Thanks.
• Day 3: Really? Donuts?
• Day 4: No, but really? I can’t eat another donut. No, I mean, of course I’m going to eat 6 of them throughout this stressful, miserable day. But really?
• Day 5: This is a joke, right?
• Day 6: Hysterical laughter between me and my mom. Puzzlement from the well meaning friend.
• Day 7: Ok, pal, I love you, but take this box of donuts and the three we still have sitting here from previous days and just get out of our house.

None of these are probably the reaction you were going for.

Which leads us to the very logical –

#2. Do send healthy food.

I know you’re busy, but if you want to score a real win, anything healthy and easy for us to heat up was appreciated.

A casserole to just shove in the oven? It was nectar of the gods.

One of my mom’s co-workers brought over a bag of homemade chicken salad sandwiches.

We devoured them. Right in front of her. And raved that she was incredible, because she was and they were delicious and not deep fried. Or a pizza (pizza was second only to Dunkin Donuts in our home for those few weeks).

#3. Send gift certificates to restaurants that deliver. 

Like I said, you’re probably busy.

$50 may or may not be a lot of money to you, but for a family of 4, that’ll pick up that tab at a place like Chili’s – which one of can go run out and grab (because as cruel as it sounds, escaping the house for a little while is usually a blessing) but it’s still like real food. And, of course, you can always pick up discounted gift cards at great sites like Raise.com.

A quick Google will tell you if your friend lives near an Applebee’s, Cheesecake Factory, T.G.I.Friday’s – all of these are the types of places that have real meals, with some actual nutritional value and can be picked up curbside.

As I mentioned above, we were eating take out and frozen meals all the time, so things like Applebee’s were way too expensive during that time.

#4. Coordinate a schedule with as many people as you can.

No joke, one day the week after my grandmother’s funeral, 4 different families sent us food on the same day. And it was a lot of food. Everyone though my aunt and her family were still at our house, so they sent over food for 8. They had actually left that morning.

It seemed like there were times we were so buried in food there was no way to eat it all. The weirdest thing about those 4 meals was that 3 of them came from teachers and the office staff at the school my mom works at.

Ladies, how is this not something you’re all pros at coordinating? I’m still puzzled over that one.

#5. Time your food well and give the family a heads up. 

Along the same lines, my personal recommendation would be to wait a few days and then send a meal.

Odds are good that immediately following a death, the family is covered. If you wait till the end of the week or the following week, you’re less likely to overlap your food delivery with people from the family’s other social circles.

At one point we had 5 of those big fresh fruit bouquets at the same time. They are flipping delicious, but there was no way we could eat all that fruit.

It may feel weird to you to wait several days, but grief doesn’t stop just because the funeral is over and it’s nice to still be thought of in the days afterward.

It also doesn’t hurt to give a call or shoot a text and say you’d like to send over some food this week, when’s a good time? This is especially useful if you’re having food delivered. You need to know someone will be there and leading up to and following a funeral, there are so many errands to run, there’s no guarantee someone will be home to answer the door.

One final thought – you can’t really do anything wrong by dropping off food. The worst that would happen is it would get thrown in the trash after you leave. I know my family, and I’m sure it’s true of most, appreciated everything everyone did for us during that time… even if your well meant donuts turn into comic relief instead of sustenance for us.

Looking for some more ideas of how to bring food to people? Anne at the Unique Gifter has two great posts along these lines:

• Easy Meals to Take to Families
• Taking Meals to Grieving and Celebrating Families