Chocolate is among the foods traditionally sent or brought to those sitting shiva, a traditional Jewish period of mourning after the death if a close relation. The food is meant to sustain the mourners who would not normally leave the house for seven days except in extreme circumstances.

 

This site specializes in shiva baskets - these are the chocolate ones. https://send.shiva.com/chocolates-sweets.html

At the start of our long national tragedy, many of us took to drink... and chocolate.

 

The timing was shortly after Halloween and there were many sad office wastebaskets full of candy wrappers in the following weeks.

 

The chocolate... and liquor... doesn't change anything objectively but it does remind people that they are alive, and that life can be sweet even now... and a little blurry around the edges doesn't hurt.

Well that's how it's been for me, and most of the people I know and the ones I work with. This deep despair rarely lifts and we turn to solace... and that solace is often in the form of our first comfort - food. As blank's link shows, the pleasure and comfort chocolate brings us is real, and objectively quantifiable. We may salt our chocolate with tears but it tastes all the better for that.

 

Kittens work too but that's another event.

Please tell me you're not furshadowing ahead... :)

Lol sadly I don't think we do kitten week... wish we did