SueBears.com Blog

It is my ferverent hope that 2006 will be a healing year for myself, my family and my friends with some respite from the pain of December 2005. As you read earlier abut the death of my husband, the return and treatment of my cancer, this family needs to recoup. But I wanted to talk a bit about sympathy cards and telephone calls. I don’t imagine, unless you have been through it, just how much help it is to receive a card or call from a friend, a lovely greeting card, and wonderful calls from family members to check on how you are doing. It takes just a moment for the person making the call or writing the note, but the effect lasts for hours and makes me feel all over again that people care!

I remember one friend who said she was afraid to call, didn’t know what to say, was worried that the call would do more harm than good - NOTHING could be farther from the truth. If you have a friend in one of these situations, just call and if you are uncomfortable, say so. Say something like, “I don’t know what to say but at least I wanted you to know I was thinging about you!” And then maybe just ask how things are, ask what you can do, and then share a story about normal life. It is not rude to talk about ordinary things even through your friend is going through extraordinary times. That little distraction can be a godsend and I find I am thinking about their story hours later and smiling about it.

I just have to share a quick experience with my son the other day. He was driving me to a medical appointment (which was guaranteed to cause me some discomfort). As we drove there were fuzzy palm frawns all over the street from a ferocious wind the night before. He said, ” well, there seem to be tribbles all over!” In case you have forgotton there was a wonderful early Star Trek episode in which furry, pregnant little tribbles were brought aboard the ship and soon over ran everybody. But that little comment brought many smiles for days. Another story - I was supposed to attend a holiday party for the Red Hat Society and, of course, couldn’t. But each attendee signed a two page note with well wishes, expression of sympathy and such and it is a real treasure.

So when your friend is hurting please call or write - it means so much!

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 8th, 2006 at 10:31 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.