Someone I knew back in high school has recently lost her husband to a tragic accident. (I dated her sister for about 6 months back then).
Everyone has always said what a great guy he was. Is it odd to send her a sympathy card (or maybe even sign the online obituary) after all these years. She is local, but haven’t seen her at all.
Feel terrible that she is going through this.
Nope. A sympathy card is the right thing to do.
I have an ex-friend. We broke up in anger years ago.
But when my roommate passed away, my ex-friend phoned me, and he said all the right things, exactly as any friend should. It moved me to tears, and I told him that it meant a very great deal to me.
And…we probably won’t speak to each other again for another ten years… But he did the right thing.
Not odd. Send it.
Reverse the positions. Wouldn’t you like to know that she cared enough to send a note?
It can in fact be really touching. When my dad died, a friend of his from 20+ years prior drove a couple of hundred miles to the funeral. It mean a huge amount to me.
I would be deeply moved that you remembered and cared enough to reach out. I think, if there can be any up-side to loss, it is the coming together of people who may have lost touch and all but dropped out of each other’s lives.
It will mean a lot to the friends and family. A whole lot. Do it.
I took a sympathy card to the funeral home that was handling the proceedings for one of my second grade teachers. I hadn’t seen her since the class, over thirty five years. Her husband contacted me and brought over a huge vase of flowers that had been at the funeral. It was gorgeous! He’d been a teacher in the high school I later attended, although I didn’t have a class with him. He told me that my card had been put on a table with pictures of her for the reception. See, one of the things I’d said had been I remembered when she was young and pretty and bouncing into the classroom in her Halloween costume. Mrs “Smith” died after a decades long battle with MS, In fact, I was part of the last class she was ever able to teach.
Send the card. You never know how much it might help.
you know the person, send a card.