Order the Damn Cheese Fries! By Katherine Rose

I get asked often what got me through Jonny’s death. The first answer is that I’ll never really get “through” his death. I will continue to adjust and adapt and live my life within the context of a brother who died.

But if you want to know how I am living within the context of Johnny death, the answer is: Cheese fries.

In the week’s after Jonny’s death, a close friend of mine took me to a movie to get me out of the house. We decided we would go to Islands Restaurant after the movie, but when the movie ended, my girlfriend said she wanted to eat somewhere healthier.

I put up a fight, “But I want the cheese fries!”

“Katie,” she said, “Are the cheese fries even that good?”

The truth is, cheese fries are delicious, and anyone who argues otherwise is wrong. Cheese fries, nachos, and tacos: If you don’t love these three foods, you are likely a psychopath. And yet … the cheese fries at Islands? Eh … they aren’t really that good.

But this isn’t what I said to my friend. In fact, I didn’t say anything. Instead, I broke down sobbing. I was shaking and struggling to catch my breath. In that moment, I could not speak. I couldn’t tell my friend that Islands was the last place Jonny and I ate together before he died, and that we had shared cheese fries. I couldn’t tell her that I needed something—anything—to feel a connection to him. All I could do was wrap myself in sorrow and sob.

And true to form, my girlfriend didn’t need to know. Without hesitating, she picked up her phone and ordered the cheese fries from Islands Restaurant.

And I’ll never forget sitting beside her while she did that, knowing that a person was going to take care of me, no questions asked. All she needed to know was that I was hurting. It didn’t matter how crazy I was in that moment. What mattered was that she saw a way to take care of me, and she grabbed onto it.

We are all hurting. And when we go out into the world, we have to remember that we don’t always understand why someone is hurting, or what small thing might trigger an unresolved pain. Sometimes we don’t need to understand why someone is hurting to understand what we can do to help.

So how I am living within the context of Jonny’s death? I am lucky to be surrounded by people from whom I don’t have to hide my crazy. I feel no judgment from these friends. They simply take care of me. They order the damn cheese fries, no questions asked.