Our thoughts and prayers are with you during this difficult time chosing a sympathy card

The other day an acquaintance – a jolly old soul who had retired from industry to watch a large plasma TV and used to postscript his emails with “not to be used in an article or on stage” – died. 

Sorry mate, got to earn a living…  unfortunately.  Like a true narcissist I've somehow managed to make it all about me ...again.

Not a huge surprise.  He’d been sending lots of emails saying he was going into hospital.  Whenever I saw him – which was increasingly infrequently – he was walking with a frame.  He had severe spinal problems and I guessed he was in a lot of pain.  In the last 12 months he’d accelerated down the hill of slow physical decline towards the cliff edge of death.  Eventually he got there with the inevitability of a car that has been driven off the end of a pier sinking into the sea.  Terrible metaphor but I don’t really want to think about it anymore…

Anyway I wondered should I send a card?  And then I realised that there is something worse than death – the politicisation of death.  What if I send his bereaved wife a religious card and he or she’s an atheist?  Or I send her an atheist card and she’s religious?  It’s hard enough to decide whether it’s an appropriate thing to send a card at all without dealing with an extra layer of nonsense.

I had a look in Clintons and a dismal load of sympathy cards they had.  I mean really … whenever I try to buy a birthday card it’s all lame ageist jokes about being one year older or an old fart so you’d think the least they could do is manage to find one joke that’s actually funny about being actually deceased for the big stop grow.  Seriously though their cards were so bland I don’t know how anyone could be bothered to send them.  And abstract – when God’s taken out of it you can put almost anything on.  Quite a lot were of nature.  I almost got one with flowers on but it kept reminding me of the phrase “pushing up the daisies?” 

What happened to all this trendy “celebration of a life stuff” we read so much about these days?  Like it’s just another birthday...?  Happy death day…?  Surely if people really felt that it would filter through to some of the cards.  But… somehow when the big day comes no one’s got any originality.  No one comes up with anything funny…  It’s not a joke.  That would be RIP trolling. 

Then I vaguely remembered him trying to get me to go to church once so decided he must have been religious.  So I tried the local churches and found some cards that were religious… but somehow I thought even if you were religious the last thing you’d want is a picture of Jesus… or worse… Mary.  Or is that just me?  Even if you are very religious a picture of God or his mum seems a bit on the nose...

Eventually I found one with that didn’t look too religious or have any sectarian overtones.   I signed it and decided there was nothing to say and posted it. 

If it was a close friend you’d find something to say … perhaps… but even posting it you wonder do they want to be reminded?  Then again is not sending a card rude?  Death etiquette … it’s difficult …when to send the card too?   I thought immediately would be too soon but on googleing it was sternly told “don’t be late”? 

Messed that one up then…