By Dixie Today my mama and I wrote thank you notes.
Well, she wrote down what she wanted to say on notebook paper, and I transcribed what she wrote onto thank you cards. These weren’t the colorful cards that you send after weddings and baby showers, but the plain engraved ones that the funeral home gives you in a big brown leather box containing Funeral Registry books and laminated book marks made from the newspaper obituary. The cards are not even something anyone wants to write or receive, but necessary. The stamps they gave us to put on the envelopes say “Forever” which is about how long it is took me to complete them.
I don’t have pretty handwriting so I wrote very slowly and deliberately. My Poppy wrote very slowly too, maybe because he also had chicken scratch handwriting but I don’t remember. He was a man of spoken words not written, and I doubt he ever wrote a thank you note. But everyone knew he appreciated them coming over and no one ever doubted they would be welcomed back.
I live in the South, where thank you cards are always sent with some sort of personal note, handwritten in cursive. It is kind of a societal ‘rule’. The address on the envelopes are written in cursive as well so it took me most of a day and a trash can full of torn up notes, envelopes and mistakes.
I would rather not write them. I would rather take the brown box with all the reminders of my Daddy’s death and throw them into a dumpster. I would rather just pretend he is still here and the last three weeks were just a long night of tiring dreams where you wake up in the morning exhausted but relieved it wasn’t true.
But it is true, so I write nice things like “Thank you for your chicken casserole, it was delicious” and “We appreciated you thinking of us” and “Thank you for your support and prayers during this difficult time”. It seems so empty to say those things out loud much less write them as slowly as I can, spelling out each word and the shape of each letter in my head so I don’t make a mistake.
But I do make mistakes anyway, as evidenced by the dwindling stack of notes and envelopes that don’t equal the stack of stamped envelopes. I don’t want to offend the people I am writing to or embarrass my family with my horrible handwriting. But, it is something you do after a funeral–you thank people.
But mostly I want to make my Daddy proud we are thanking people properly for being there for him–and us. My poppy loved people and he would (and does) want all the people who cared about him and our family to know how appreciated they were. I am sure of that. So, I tried my best to control my scribble and Mama put them in the mail today.
I don’t like writing thank you notes, but I wish there were more sent. A note to the people who simply showed up at the visitation or funeral, or said a prayer. A note to the people who quietly come up and give a quick hug to let us know they understand what we are going through, or they notice our loss. It truly is appreciated and makes the ongoing living and breathing process a little more bearable.
My biggest wish was that I had sent thank you notes to my Poppy when he was still here with us. I know he sees this now from Heaven so I just want to say Thank You Poppy…I love you…forever.