Dear Month of Letters Community,
I had thought to post something today about love and Valentine’s Day, but such a posting seems frivolous and disrespectful in light of the horrendous school shooting in Parkland, Florida.* I hope that soon we’ll learn to love each other enough to stop this violence.
Write your representatives.
Ruth
I usually try to keep my posts fairly light, but today I want to address a fairly serious topic: how to write letters that confront loss and sorrow. Condolence letters are rough to write and often rough to read. A friend of mine who lost a parent found she couldn’t even break the seal on most of the notes she received. But sympathy card and letters often do bring real comfort to the bereaved, sometimes not right away, but months or even years later. When I was seventeen, I went to visit my grandparents in New Jersey. I arrived the day a distant member of the family had 
his funeral, and that night I went with my grandparents to sit shiva with the family. During the course of the evening, one of my great uncles took me aside and told me (at great length) how, when his wife had died some years back, my mother had written him a long, beautiful letter about his wife. The letter, he told me, captured Aunt Bert’s spirit and described all her wonderful qualities so that he felt his wife was always close to him. The letter meant so much to him that he had it framed and hung it on his wall where he could see it every day.*
As with any type of writing, knowing your audience and respecting the kind of relationship you have with the recipient of your note are key. When writing to a non-intimate acquaintance
(such as a co-worker) who is grieving, it’s usually best to come up with a version of “I’m sorry for your loss.” Anything more extensive than that is likely to feel like an intrusion.
Date
Dear Ms. Saunders,
I was sorry to hear that your mother passed away. I remember meeting her once when she came by to have lunch with you. She seemed like a lovely person. Allow me to offer you my
Genuine sympathy,
Bob Milne
What one might write should also depend on what one knows of the deceased. If you knew the deceased well, a memory or story that the family might like to keep can be a great gift.
Date
Dear Rebecca,
It is so hard to believe that Saul is not longer with us. He had such a calm and steadying personality. Remember that time we were all at the lake and the kids found the puppy with the broken leg? Sammy was howling louder than the dog, but Saul reassured him as he splinted the pup’s leg and wrapped the dog in a blanket. The whole way to the vet’s office Saul kept both kids and canine soothed with that low voice of his. And when no one claimed the dog, Saul just brought her back without thinking twice and made her part of the family. He did that for a lot of people too, including
Your friend,
Michal
Offer to help — but only if you really can follow through and if you won’t be hurt by a refusal.
Sensitive condolence letters are often marked by what they don’t say. If you aren’t sure, don’t write that the deceased will be missed terribly. Unless you know the religious beliefs of the bereaved very well, don’t offer comfort out of your own faith. Avoid recounting the stories of your own losses; the letter should focus on the recipient’s pain. Especially when the loss is fresh, don’t pressure the mourner to find comfort. Anyone who has been loved deserves some pain and tears. Don’t add anything chatty; the note should be about the deceased or the loss to the reader only. Death is a time to be classy and formal, to lean on ritual and formulae. There are exceptions, of course, but unless you’re sure that deviating from the verbal rituals of grieving will be welcome, dress your letter in the accepted trappings of mourning.
In the face of a death, I think of Emily Dickinson and her poem that I’ll let close this post:
After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?
The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –
This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go – **
Ruth
Ruth Feiertag is the owner of PenKnife Writing and Editorial Services (http://www.penknife-editing.net), the Senior Editor for Regal House Publishing (https://regalhousepublishing.com), and an independent scholar who writes about Medieval and Early Modern English Literature.
(This one’s for my dad, d. 2007, but keenly missed and never forgotten.)
————————————————
* When I got home, I told my mother this story and she burst out laughing. It turned out that when her mother died, my great-uncle had written her a letter that read,
Dear Sarah,
I heard about your mother. Well, that’s life!
** https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47651/after-great-pain-a-formal-feeling-comes-372
(A post in honor of Mary Robinette Kowal and the Month of Letters)
Dear Friends,
Here we are, about to launch another Month of Letters. For the first time, we are setting sail with a new captain (or two), and we owe a shipload of gratitude to Cooksterz and Ronda for taking the helm. But I want to dedicate this post to Mary Robinette Kowal, the one who built the boat and took us on as crew. It’s been a marvelous voyage so far and we’ll keep cruising through these Februaries, thanks to Mary, who is still providing us all with her support and the means to keep the site and community viable and vibrant.
~~~
My Great-Aunt Lillie was a champion of the thank-you note. She expected us to have one in the mail the moment her letter or parcel was relinquished to her local post office. And once she had received our cards, she wrote us thank-you notes for the thank-you notes we had sent to her. There are still a number of Aunt Lillies in this world, but for many of us, the thought of writing a thank-you note causes anxiety and cold sweats. It needn’t. The art of writing thank-you notes is an easy skill to acquire, and I am here to share the secret formula.
I think most of us want our letters of appreciation to sound gracious and heartfelt, but let’s face it — most thank-you notes are stilted and sound insincere.
Dear Tia Esperanza,
Thank you for the nice socks.
Love,
Jose
We can do better, and without tearing out our hair. We don’t even have to use the words “thank you” — some people even maintain that one ought not employ them. The basic thank-you note has six parts that will result in a decent missive of gratitude that does not sound grasping, but does come off as thoughtful.
That said, I should mention that my mother once received a one-word thank-you from a somewhat pretentious friend of the family that read merely, “Magnifiqué!” But generally, a thank-you message should go something like this:
Date
Dear Aunt Lillie,
I was so pleased to receive the letter you sent in response to my thank-you note. I am always amazed at how much family history you are able to pack into only five or six pages. The story about my grandfather was very amusing, and I am so happy that you shared it with me. I send this with
Love,
Ruth*
A slightly more formal example might read like this:
Stardate
Dear Mr. Kenobi,
Running into you in the desert the other day was a real delight. We should do it again soon. And I certainly was not expecting you to entrust my father’s old light saber to me. I can’t imagine a more meaningful gift. I’ve put it on the coffee table; it’s a real conversation starter.
R2 and C3PO send their regards and ask whether you will come for tea next Tuesday? Allow me to add my voice to theirs, and to say, once again, how pleased I am to have the saber. I am
Deeply grateful,
Luke Skywalker
One to a good friend can be more casual:
Sometime in the Recent Past
Dear Bruce,
I just had to dash off this note to tell you how much I love the shorts. Where did you find something so trendy with that artful distressed look? With the right suspenders, I’ll be able to wear them with everything.
I’m looking forward to seeing you at dinner this weekend. Tony says to ask if the Hulk will play on our team for the volleyball game.
Thanks again for the shorts. They’re just smashing.
Love,
Pepper
Remember that even if your note is short and follows a form, it can still be sincere. The point is to let the person who gave you the lurid socks or who wrote the glowing letter of recommendation for you know that you received the gift or are aware of the effort and appreciate the thought and time that was expended on your behalf. (It doesn’t matter whether you really appreciate the socks or not; while you are writing the note, you do.)
A final admonition regarding thank-you notes: unless you have a true disability that precludes holding a pen (and some of us do), thank-you notes should be written by hand, on paper, and sent through the mail. All the e-mails in the world will not take the place of a holograph missive composed in the most legible script the writer can muster. Handwriting still conveys a personal communication that nothing else can match.
So let’s practice. Take a moment and think of
For example: two guys, cousins, and an invitation:
Prehistory
Dear Noah,
Dude! You always have the best ideas for our family re-unions. A cruise sounds awesome, but the whole animal theme doesn’t work for me — my allergies to fur, dander, and hay are way too gnarly. But you have a great time and tell me about it when you get back. But I really appreciate the invite — I can always count on you to keep me afloat.
Don’t worry about me. I heard there are some killer waves coming our way, so I’ll be on my board, thinking of you stuck on that boat with the fam and critters. But, Dude, I am still, like,
Totally grateful,
Lamech III
(There’s a discussion about gratitude and thank-you letters here. Do share any good notes you compose, if you are comfortable doing so.)
Here’s another way to get some practice. On page fifty of Write Back Soon!** there’s an article entitled “Three Hundred Sixty-Five Thank Yous.” It tells about John Kralik who, at a low point in his life, spent a year writing a thank-you note every day and managed to turn his life around. I’m not suggesting that if we all write a note of gratitude every day that all our problems will miraculously melt away. But doing so will probably make us much better thank-you letter writers.
So here’s what I hope will be the first of many expressions of gratitude that I make during this Month of Letters, and my last offering in this post:
29 January 2018
Dear Mary,
I never foresaw how much the Month of Letters would come to mean to me. I’m not very good at keeping up with answering letters from Letter Monthers the rest of the year, but every February I feel connected to the world in a way that sustains me through the other eleven months. The Month of Letters community is an incredible gift that you gave us all, and I am proud to help continue what you started.
I also want to let you know that your courage and honesty about your depression have made it easier for me to be upfront about mine. That you were able to ask us to help you now when you need to take care of yourself is also admirably brave and I honor you for it. You are an inspiration in so many ways, and for that I am
Profoundly grateful,
Ruth
* I should be clear that Aunt Lillie was one of my favourite relatives and I genuinely treasure the several letters I have from from her containing some very interesting perspectives on family history.
** Karen Benke, Write Back Soon! (Boston: Roost Books, 2015).
Ruth Feiertag is the owner of PenKnife Writing and Editorial Services (http://www.penknife-editing.net), the Senior Editor for Regal House Publishing (https://regalhousepublishing.com), and an independent scholar who writes about Medieval and Early Modern English Literature.
