What to write in a sympathy card

There is a reason the sympathy card sits on the kitchen counter for three days, unwritten. Everything you think of sounds either hollow or presumptuous, so you wait until you can find the right words, and then it's been two weeks and writing anything feels worse than writing nothing.

Write it badly. Send it anyway. The people I have spoken to who lost someone almost never remember what a card said. They remember who sent one.

Here is what to write, and the small number of things genuinely worth avoiding.

The short version, if you need it now

• "I'm so sorry. I'm thinking of you and I'm not going anywhere."
• "There's nothing I can say that helps. I'm here anyway."
• "I loved [name]. I'm so sorry."
• "I don't know what to say, but I didn't want to say nothing."

That last one is honest, and honesty is doing most of the work in a sympathy card.

If you knew the person who died

This is the most valuable card the family will get, and most people don't realise it. Tell them something they don't know.

• "Your mother once spent an entire afternoon helping me find a lost ring in a car park. She didn't know me well. She just stayed until we found it."
• "I worked with your dad for six years. He talked about you constantly — I knew your exam results before I knew his job title."
• "[Name] was the first person to make me feel welcome here. I've never forgotten it."
• "I want you to know your sister was funny. Properly funny. I still repeat things she said."

A grieving family is terrified their person will be forgotten. A specific memory is proof they were not.

If you didn't know them

• "I never met your father, but I've seen what he built in you."
• "I only know him through you, and through you he sounded remarkable."
• "I'm sorry for the loss of someone who clearly mattered enormously."

If you're close to the person grieving

Offer something concrete. "Let me know if you need anything" puts the work on the person least able to do it.

• "I'm bringing food on Thursday. You don't need to be dressed or talk to me. I'll leave it at the door if that's easier."
• "I'll handle the school run next week. It's done, it's not a favour, don't reply to this."
• "I'm going to keep texting you. You never have to answer."
• "I'll call Sunday at 6. Pick up or don't."

If it's been a while

Late is not too late. Grief outlasts the cards by months.

• "I know it's been three months. I imagine it's quieter now, and that quiet can be the hardest part. I'm thinking of you."
• "I didn't write at the time because I didn't know how. I'm sorry. I'm here now."
• "It's been a year. I remembered."

The anniversary card is the one almost nobody sends, and the one people tell me they never forget receiving.

What to avoid, and why

"They're in a better place." Unless you know they shared that belief, this asks the grieving person to accept a worldview in the middle of the worst week of their life.

"Everything happens for a reason." There is no reason. Suggesting one invites them to go looking, and there's nothing to find.

"At least..." — at least it was quick, at least they lived a long life, at least you had time to prepare. Every sentence starting "at least" is an argument that they should feel better than they do.

"I know exactly how you feel." You don't, and it turns their loss into your story. "I lost my mother two years ago and I remember the strangeness of the first weeks" is different: it offers company rather than equivalence.

Asking how they died. If they want to tell you, they will.

One thing worth knowing about voice

Grief is isolating in a specific way: everything arrives as text, and text has no warmth in it. A written card is read once in a difficult moment, in a silent room.

A recorded message is different. Hearing that someone's voice caught slightly when they said your mother's name tells you something no sentence can. It says this cost me something too. Several people have told me they kept a voicemail from that period and played it more than once.

You do not need to hold it together. The wobble is not a flaw in the message. It is the message.

Light a candle for them

A quiet 3D flame they can sit with, and your voice saying the part a written card never quite manages.

Make a card — $2.99 — one payment, no account, ready in about two minutes.