Send the Card

I have never experienced a loss as great as losing my mom before. I have lost grandparents and distant relatives over the years, but losing my mom is something that is so foreign and unreal that it still seems like it’s a dream. However, we all know it was not a dream. It is very real and now it's time to deal with it, or at least part of it. 

My siblings and I got together tonight to write the thank you notes from my mom’s funeral. We decided it would be best for us all to be together to do it, and I am so happy we decided to do it like that. It was very painful, but bearable because we were together. 

As I was going through certain notes, I started to jot down things I want to remember for the next time someone else has to go through this and I have to send the thank you or make the food or whatever else the person needs during their time of grief. 

So, I have compiled a list of things I’ve learned so far since my mom’s death in regard to funerals and thank you notes. I am writing this down for myself to remember and maybe it will be useful to some of you:

1. Put your address on your card that you send along with the gift/money/flowers/etc. that you sent with it! 

Going through hundreds of thank you cards gets overwhelming. It is a mixture of exhaustion and extreme gratitude. My mom touched so many people’s lives and reading their cards shed even more light on that. Some of the messages people wrote were truly touching and we will remember them forever. One card had a message that read, “Your mom is not gone, she is now just at the end of the trail waiting for all of you.” What a beautiful way to think of my mom. That gave me a weird sense of peace and I’m grateful for that. There were so many more like this, so many memories, so many stories. It was beautiful and tragic all at the same time. Going through all these cards though, some of the envelopes get lost, you lose the addresses, forget what someone sent, etc., so I have learned the importance of putting your address on the actual card so when people write thank you notes, it just makes life easier. 

2. Write nice and neat on your card! 

This was very important for me to be reminded of because my handwriting is atrocious. I have never had nice handwriting and honestly, I’ve never really cared about it before. My mom did though. My mom always talked about the importance of nice handwriting, and she had the most beautiful handwriting in the world. Going through some cards, I really struggled with reading some of them and even some addresses! It was challenging and it was a good little thing to remind myself of when I am writing cards. People are already exhausted by this point in the grieving process. The last thing they need to do is spend extra time guessing what the card says and who it’s from. Just write nice and neat. 

3. Sending stamps is a unique idea, but often forgot about necessity!

Instead of money, gifts, flowers, or something else, some people put stamps in their cards. I have never seen that before and at first it caught me off guard. When I opened my first one, I was like, “Ummm I think my person made a mistake. There are stamps in here!” But, turns out, we used almost every damn stamp that was sent…and there was A LOT. Now I see that that is actually a wonderful gift and saved us a lot of time from having to go back and buy more stamps after we ran out. Such a simple gesture, that really meant so much to us. So, sometimes if you are not sure what to send, send stamps!

4. Send food!

The amount of food that was sent to us before, during, and after mom’s last days was insane. When we first got it all, we all thought there is no way we are going to eat all this food! What are we going to do with it? Wrong again. We ate all the food. Food is a very common tool for grief and since we have a humungous family, plus an even bigger circle of tremendous friends, the food was eaten in its entirety. The house was constantly full of people loving my mom and bringing Mayberry to life in her last moments. It was so nice to always have meals made and ready to go. I did not realize that the grief I was about to experience is so paralyzing that the last thing going through your mind is cooking, let alone feeding 20 other people. Your brain simply cannot process anything. So it was incredible having so many people who took that into consideration to make sure our family had meals. It truly makes me emotional thinking about that now. We never had to cook one thing. We just got to be with our mom. For that, I am extremely grateful to everyone who was a part of that. 

5. Send paper products!

This one completely shocked me. Yes, we had food. BUT what do you eat food on? Plates! So, for awhile we were doing dishes, for all the people I mentioned above. Until a few people brought out a shitload of paper plates, towels, utensils, and napkins. Game changer. Once again, the absolute last thing going through your mind in a time like this is dishes. You just don’t think about it. Your grief won’t allow you to. So having all those paper products that we could just use and throw away made life so much easier. The other things they brought out were garbage bags, Tupper wear, and, most importantly, toilet paper. We had all completely forgot about that little baby. Woops! Again, other people were on it and saved our asses. Literally! 

There are many other things I’ve learned from my mom, but those will come at a later date. I’m writing a beautiful list of things she has passed on and I can’t wait to share that with you, but for now I thought these 5 things were important to mention too. They are just simple little things that people probably don’t think matter that much. They never mattered to me before. But now, I can truly tell you, they mattered significantly. 

The most important thing that I took away from tonight is the importance of sending cards. The cards that we read through tonight were so precious to us, especially cards with stories and meaning behind them. We saved so many of those cards. They will be cherished for the rest of our lives. They gave us little pieces of our mom through the eyes of other people, and they saw her just as beautifully as we all did. It was incredible to relive all the love people had for her and to see all the lives she touched. Every person’s thank you card meant so much, there just simply aren’t enough words to describe it. 

So, even if you think it doesn’t matter, send the food, send the paper products, and send the
damn card…just make sure to put the address on it! 

Happy trails, 

Em