Quote:
Originally Posted by cKy
As someone who has lost 2 family members to brain tumors (Dad and Aunt), I cant stress how incredible it is to have food premade for the family. With the incredible amount of stress and energy that gets sucked from you, food is literally the last thing on your mind. Get these people some precooked foods they can warm up and eat.
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And, buy them a metric ton of recyclable plates/bowls/cups/cutlery. Then they can just dump everything in the blue bins rather than have to worry about cleaning up/doing dishes - they can just sweep it into the blue bin.
I'd also make up some easily grabbed snack type packs with fruit/veg/crackers/cheese/yogurt, etc. Sometimes a full meal is just too much to deal with, so if there's something they can grab easily to munch as they drive to appointments/the hospital, wherever.
Parking at the hospital is atrocious in terms of cost. If a few of you got together, you could buy them monthly passes/a year pass and take that cost off their plates. Most of the cafeterias at hospitals now have gift cards, so it's another idea of something monetary that may be helpful. Fuel cards as well. Having spent several years in and out of hospitals with my child and their medical issues and my dad when he had colon cancer, fuel, food and parking were pretty big costs that could also be stressful costs to deal with.
I know this isn't funeral related, but it may be just as helpful. When there is a death in the family or amongst our friend group, we buy all the following and drop it off. Someone did it for us when my sister-in-law died, and it was so helpful, more so than food, a lot of which we ended up throwing out. Slightly different in this case, but I believe it can be as helpful, since they are likely to have people coming in and out of the house, to take care of kids if they have any, family coming in to visit/wanting to help, etc. Items we pick up and package up:
- box of garbage bags
- recyclable plates/bowls/cups/coffee cups with lids/cutlery
- big tin of coffee
- big box of tea
- bag of sugar
- big bottle of the powdered creamer
- large carton of coffee cream
- biggest package of toilet paper we can find
- a few packages of paper towels
- big tub of margarine/few blocks of butter (whatever they use)
- any of the basics like this, that they just won't have to worry about for a while - this is when a Costco membership came in handy
I had no time to think of what we needed when we were at the hospital constantly, and very little energy to devote to thinking about asking for helping or delegating anything. As everyone else has said, just taking a lot of day to day chores off their plates while they settle in to this diagnosis and all the changes it will mean for them, will help.
And, may I mention one other thing? If he/they are absolutely insistent they will take care of something? Let them. Every once in a blue moon, I found I needed the utter boringness of doing something like mowing the lawn or whatever. It can get pretty weird in your head when you are practically living at the hospital or constantly running to clinics/appointments/specialists. Sometimes, boring is very needed. It might seem weird, and contradictory to what I said above, but you'll know what I mean, when they let you know.