Sympathy cards

What to say and what not to say.

There is no pain so great
as the memory of joy
in present grief.
—Aeschylus

I keep putting off the topic of sympathy cards because I keep having to write them. It seems crass, somehow, to offer up tips to a readership that likely includes recipients of cards for which I’ve applied said tips. I’ll approach this topic during a spell when I haven’t written any of these awful things for a while, I tell myself.

But that day keeps not coming, and since time moves in only one direction, and bodies move only in the diretion of atrophy (do you enjoy your birthday as much as you did when you were a kid?), I’m guessing that day might never come. So, while these March days keep blustering and clouding and being too damn cold (or torrential, or wet, or siesmic, depending on where you hang your hat), we’ll tackle the topic and be done with it.

The thing about these missives is that they are the profoundest kind of personal. Sure, love notes are personal, letters to your grandchild are personal. But posts that address the ultimate loss—something that neither the sender nor the receiver has yet experienced, something that, one could argue, hurts more than any other event—that’s a whole nother brand of personal. What I do and what feels right to me might not work for you. But a few universal pointers on words to avoid or aim for do apply in most circumstances.

First, the no-nos.

You don’t know what the grieving person is feeling, so don’t say you do. You might have suffered a parallel loss, but you aren’t her. She isn’t you. This is just math.

An ancilliary no-no, I suggest, is citing your own experience to try to soothe. “It took me a long time to grieve when my sibling died. I can only imagine that the loss of your brother …”—No. This is not about you even if you try to use your experience to talk about the person you are writing to.

I am sure there are exceptions to my anciliary admonishment. In fact, one occurs to me, although it is only tangential. When I lost a cat, which if you know me at all you know is always a deeply traumatic loss, a fellow cat-lover wrote that she found comfort knowing that it would be worse for our companions if they outlived us instead of the other way around, and she hoped I might be comforted by this as well. I was.

For heaven’s sake, don’t find deep meaning or make righteous observations about the death. Even if you believe that your friend lost her daughter “for a reason,” don’t share that belief in your card. Unless you and the card’s recipient both share and have discussed specific spiritual beliefs and you both have testified your beliefs that we go to “a better place” after death, don’t make this prediction, either.

Frankly, I advise against doing it even if you can tick off those cited circumstances, because you just don’t know what the grieving person is going through: It might include a crisis of faith in which she has tossed out everything she thought she believed.

Don’t write a tome. I suspect that isn’t advice I need to offer, since, at least in my experience, just coming up with two to three sentences is painful enough. Keep it short.

And don’t worry too much about timing, either. Grief is irrational and doesn’t understand time. If a few weeks or even perhaps a month go by before you get it in the mail, that might be just the day your loved one needed to receive it. Probably much longer than that, however, gets dicey, especially if it is somebody you interact with on a regular basis.

This is just me, and I know there are digital sympathy cards out there, undoubtedly including very nice ones, but I wouldn’t. People can hold a paper card. They can think of you, of their loved one, when they glance at the shelf where they’ve propped it. The digital card will be lost in a maelstrom. But that’s just me.

On the other hand, the online community tools that funeral services provide for loved ones to leave and read electronic memories, photos, and sympathies are lovely. They provide a shared community for people geographically apart and a safe space for people unable or unwilling to make in-person contact. What I say here about physical cards applies to this medium, too, although an advantage of this service is that it is two-way, an opportunity for the grieving person to respond if she wishes.

Onto what you can do.

Be you. Don’t affect a formal language or write words you wouldn’t say. Be heartfelt and honest.

A mutual friend suffered a recent loss, and my husband offered to write The Card. He didn’t look happy about it, but his handwriting is better than mine, and he wanted to do it even if he didn’t want to have to do it. He asked me for suggestions. I told him what I typically say, the sorts of phrases and ideas I tend to use. He nodded and went away and came out an hour later and showed me what he’d written.

There was not one iota, not one whiff, of anything I’d said in the card. And it was perfect. It sounded like him. It came from his heart. I can’t testify to its effect on the recipient, but I can say that I would be happy to receive that card.

Cite something about the person lost that speaks to you. Something they did, the sort of person they were. A memory or story about them.

Or: acknowledge the recipient’s sorrow. Not “I know how you’re feeling” (see above); rather, “I hope that, past the pain, a time comes when you can also find comfort in memories of your mother.”

Or of course you can simply state that you are thinking of them or that your heart is with them in this awful time.

If the person you are writing to is local, you might offer help. “How can I help?” is a whole nother topic not covered by the focus of this newsletter, since it involves actions rather than words. But briefly here: If you make such an offer— which is a lovely gesture—don’t say you’d like “to help.” Make it specific. “Can I take your kids on an outing for a couple of hours this weekend?” “I will bring equipment next week to mow your lawn. If you wish, I can also come inside to tidy up or do a load of laundry.”

A couple of general thoughts: These days, many cards come with great phrases already printed for you. That’s a wonderful development, but you should still add your own words, something different from the preprinted ones. Not many, but more than your signature.

It depends on the people involved, of course, but another option is a homemade card. That depends on your skills, of course. I wouldn’t dream of doing this, because the beginning and end of my talent as visual artist involves a little squiggly line that represents my hair, which is supposed to stand in for my head, and another squiggly line to indicate a smile. But if you have the materials and the wherewithall, by all means, create.

The up side of this option is that you can be miserly with the words because the nonverbal message will be so powerful. A beautiful, thick square of high-quality paper laced with a watercolor drawing or a collage or a piece of calligraphy need not “say” much more than “I am thinking of you” or “Deepest sympathies.”

Find lots of very nice phrasing suggestions in this blog on the topic. An example among dozens: “No one can ever replace the amazing person your wife was. My thoughts are with you during this time.” The suggested words are grouped under an exhaustive list of topics.

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