My dad says it’s been weird to read his alumni newsletter over the years, as his graduating class goes from a nice long Marriages column, to a nice long Newcomers column, to a nice long Deaths column. I’m noticing the same slow gradual shift in my own alumni newsletter (the Newcomers list is getting alarmingly sparse), and in the kind of news I get from family and friends. I had so many wedding gifts to buy for awhile, and now almost none—or sometimes one for a second wedding. For awhile I had a large “Baby Gifts Box” in the basement: I could confidently buy good baby stuff on clearance, knowing I’d have a recipient for it. But now it’s rare to need a baby present.
And for a huge part of my life I had no need for sympathy cards, but now I need them regularly enough to get frustrated with the skimpy selection. It’s hard to find the right one for the situation. Some of them are way too light, like “Oh, pooh, someone died! Hope ya feel better soon!!” Some of them are too heavy, like “The light has gone out of your world; I wouldn’t be surprised if you never recovered.” Some of them are way too elaborate: $5.99 worth of gilt script and big flowers and tissue lining. Many of them have the wrong tone for my relationship to the bereaved: I’m not going to say things the same way to my grandaunt who lost her husband as to a friend who lost a parent. Many of them make unsubstantiated claims about how things will turn out. Some of them have gaggingly cheezy text.
When I do find a good card, I buy several copies of it and tuck them aside. This feels a little too…practical, considering the circumstances in which I need the cards, but IT IS HARD TO FIND GOOD ONES OKAY? Plus, and this goes even another level of practical: when my grandmother died and we were going through the sympathy cards to help my grandfather, there were a lot of duplicates: 100 people choosing from the selection of 10 sympathy cards. If you buy ahead of time and those cards are discontinued, you won’t be duplicating. And if I may say one more practical thing, it’s nice to have a card I can send out right away instead of having to wait until the next time I can go to the store.
It used to be common to use black-edged writing paper for sympathy letters, and until recently you could still get it at Crane & Co. They do have the black-bordered notecards (photo from Crane.com), and I’ve considered them but I worry that it seems a little morbid to have Death Stationery on hand (but stockpiling sympathy cards? no prob!).
Etsy is an option, but I found it difficult to find what I was looking for: a search for “sympathy card” generated thousands and thousands of matches, very few of which were sympathy cards. I did find a few, including the one above by Silver Cloud Delights (photo from their shop).
Here’s another Etsy card I like: Sympathy Letterpress Card by Paper Dragonfly Studio (photo from their shop).
And one more: Sympathy letterpress card by Smock Paper (photo from their shop).
Since sympathy cards tend to be expensive anyway (as with Mother’s Day cards, they know they’ve got you in a situation where skimping on the cost feels wrong), I’d prefer to give my $4 to an artist rather than to a greeting card company. On the other hand, the shipping can make the artist cards more like $5 or $6, so I would probably buy a little stack of cards all at once to reduce the shipping cost/card.
Or you could make a card: online photo-processors often have easy ways to make your own card with your own printed sentiment inside. I tried this on Snapfish and found it hard to find the background I wanted (it’s mostly birthday and wedding and baby designs), but once I found a good one the whole thing went smoothly. The card cost around $3.50 including shipping, and I put text in it that didn’t make me want to gag, and it was highly sentimental with photos of the deceased on the front. I was happy with how it turned out, and with the quality of the printing and the card—but in the end I had doubts and didn’t send it after all because I wasn’t sure if that was a bit…odd, to have made a card out of the photos? What do you think? Too weird? I bought a nice card at the store instead.
Because of the public nature of my dad’s job, he and my mom go to a LOT of funerals. Mom stockpiles sympathy cards, too. And birthday and wedding cards. I like the Crane cards best; what does that say about me?
Nowheymama | March 10th, 2010 at 11:59 am
Nowheymama- I like them too! I say it means we’ve got Timeless Good Taste!
swistle | March 10th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
I would just buy blank stationery and write my sentiments inside. And a photo card of the deceased does seem a little odd, but maybe I have issues and I don’t know it.
nicole | March 10th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
I think that the kind of card you send depends on the relationship you have with the family of the deceased. For example, sending a generic “so sorry for your loss” card is fine for someone you don’t know all that well (the spouse of your spouse’s coworker) but a picture card would be a great option if you know that person’s family well (like a sweet card for the loss of your best childhood friend’s parent). During our time of loss, we received an irreverent, hilarious card from a couple friend of ours and it was PERFECT. We giggled at the card and it lessened the grief for a few moments. In fact, we put it on the fridge for a while so we could think about the fact that they managed to find a card that so perfectly captured our relationship with the couple and the person who died.
g~
g~ | March 10th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
I agree that having them on-hand is nice and convenient. If I find one I like I also buy several. I have a hard time finding non-religious cards that don’t express something that I wouldn’t normally say so buying several seems smart to me. I haven’t purchased any online. I can do stationary, but not cards. I guess I need to feel them. I’m always concerned that the message/design/feel doesn’t give off something that I don’t mean it to.
Amanda | March 10th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
I think that would be a VERY nice sympathy card, fwiw. Right now most of my friends/family have moved out of the marriage part of life and into the children part. I hadn’t t really given much thought to what comes next…
Devan | March 10th, 2010 at 1:17 pm
Those Etsy cards are beautiful, but I like the idea of a card with pictures of the person on it — especially if they are good pictures, and worth saving, the kind that you think the person would like to be remembered by. It sounds like something I’d want to have and keep, if I were grieving.
marilyn | March 10th, 2010 at 2:21 pm
I’m not sure how I feel about the photo sympathy card. I am quite lucky to have experienced very little loss of loved ones in my life. Looking back on how I would have felt after the loss of my grandfather a few years ago to receive a card with a picture of him…well, I take that back. I think it would have been great. It would definitely be weird for someone you don’t know so well, but it would have been nice to see him in a happy situation, as someone else remembered him.
Buttercup | March 10th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Strangely enough, I like the idea of the sympathy card with photos on it. I find that I never know what to write in one, especially if the situation is particularly tragic. Putting together a card with photos shows that you took the time to make it personal and that you really care, even if you didn’t know exactly what to say. When my brother died a few years ago, we got a ton of sympathy cards, many of which were cheesy or a bit inappropriate, given the situation, but I would have been so happy to have received a card with pictures, especially because they would probably be pictures I hadn’t seen before. That would have been such a nice surprise amidst a bunch of depressing cards.
JCF | March 10th, 2010 at 7:32 pm
I agree-somebody needs to come up with a whole new line of sympathy cards with simple designs and sentiments. I too have such a hard time finding something I don’t feel ooky sending (I’m not religious, and that is the theme of the majority of available cards-I feel like sending a card like that is disingenuous) that I stockpile when I find one I “like.” My husband needed one for a work acquaintance recently and I very grudgingly gave up the last one in my stash.
books | March 11th, 2010 at 12:15 am
Honestly? I think you agonize over it far too much. When someone loses a loved one, they are just happy that you thought enough of the deceased to take the time to send a card. They are usually too sad to pay much attention to the card anyway.
The best card is one with a special memory of the deceased. Shoot, you could send a birthday card with a special memory and all anyone is going to remember is the memory you wrote in it.
MaryBT | March 11th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
I found this problem so vexing that when I chose my personal stationary, I purposely chose a design that was sympathy-card appropriate. True story. I’ve used it half a dozen times for this purpose and it works. I have also used the black-edged Crane’s paper. Some say morbid, I say practical, especially since I seem to find all of the pre-printed sympathy cards impossibly schmoopy. I’ve included pictures of the deceased tucked into the card as a nice reminder of how I remember them, but the photo card sounds nice too, I think.
pseudostoops | March 14th, 2010 at 11:14 pm