05: What to Send a Grieving Widow
Written June 7, 2022
There's a big basket on our kitchen island full of sympathy cards. In the weeks following Satish’s death, new cards arrived in the mail daily. One day, I went to check the mailbox and found something glorious – junk mail. The only thing waiting for me were coupons for Arby's roast beef sandwiches and $10 off my next oil change. Sweet relief.
When tragedy strikes, people want to do something. For a grieving family, this means you receive a lot of stuff. Some things are helpful, others are not. This post is about what makes a good gift.
A couple of disclaimers before we begin. First, this is my experience. I hope it provides guidance on how best to support someone in grief. But, please don’t take my experience as the only experience, because grief looks different for each person. Second, if you read this and find yourself saying, “wait, did I do that?” know your gift is still appreciated. How you show someone you care about them is less important than showing someone you care about them.
With all that, I offer the following insights.
Cards
Over the past 12 weeks, we have received 127 cards. Here’s what stood out:
Sign your first and last name. You know how many Sarah’s I know? A lot, apparently.
Avoid bible quotes. Grief is not the time to evangelize, even to those who are practicing Christians. Faith is complicated during this time. I am a lifelong Lutheran and found all the Christian messages to be patronizing and presumptive. Leave that work to God, not a greeting card.
Write a personal message – our best gifts were personalized. The most memorable card I received was from someone I never met, a client from Satish’s work. She wrote that his laughter was contagious during Zoom meetings. He always asked how her weekend was. They would exchange stories about their families. He made her feel appreciated. She missed him. Her card was beautiful.
Flowers
While flowers seem like a standard and safe gift for most, they aren’t. Kushal has a very bad pollen allergy and as the number of flowers in our house increased, so did his flu-like symptoms. It soon became intolerable and we had to remove all the flowers from our house. So before you send flowers, be 100% sure that nobody in the house is allergic, or choose simple bouquets that have no pollen-producing culprits.
We also received a lot of house plants. Personally, I love them but this might not be a good gift for everyone. Plants need to be cared for or they die. Be certain that the person you are sending them to is up for the task.
Food
At first, I resisted the meal train, but people kept bringing food anyway. So then I thought, “well at least this will provide some order.” It did. It also brought a lot of mac-and-cheese. Tragedy reveals the cooks. For six weeks meals were delivered to our house three days a week. We put a cooler outside on our porch and when we arrived home from sports practice, food was waiting. Here are some lessons learned.
Cooking for two is impossible. Leftovers were endless.
There is such a thing as too much comfort food. Pasta, cheese, potatoes, brownies, cookies, cakes, pies, chocolate. It was a lot. Our new comfort food is vegetables.
Embrace the help. Meals made the transition back to new routines easier.
Sometimes we need people to cook for us, and sometimes we need to cook. I didn’t realize how much I love cooking until I wasn’t doing it. One day, I asked a good friend to come over for dinner that I would cook. “Absolutely!” she responded. Later, she told me her therapist instructed her to bake me something. She looked at her therapist and said, “No. I’m not doing that. She doesn’t need more pie. She needs someone to cook for.” She knows me well.
Books
This is a tricky category. Several people sent us books on grief. On the one hand, I deeply appreciated this gift. These folks honestly acknowledged what we were going through. They offered something beyond condolences, strategies to help us mourn. And yet, from a practical perspective, the death of a loved one is very time-consuming. I have had zero time to read any of them.
The exception is children's books. Those we read. One book, in particular, was extremely helpful. It’s called Death is Stupid by Anastasia Higginbotham and is told from the perspective of a small boy who lost his grandmother. He navigates all the stupid things that adults say to children about death. It’s amazing for kids, but also great for adults to reflect on our own perspectives. I left it on our kitchen island as a litmus test. As visitors came, they inevitably would pick it up and peruse through. I watched their reactions. People would either laugh and say, “Wow this book is great” or put it down with a sour look and walk away. The sour-faced people instantly went on my watch list. They were the ones who were probably going to say something stupid.
Garbage and Grass
One morning I stood in the kitchen and heard a rumbling on the side of our house. I looked out the window to see our neighbor dragging our garbage can to the street. “Oh, it’s garbage day” I thought. I had no idea.
Another morning, Kushal and I left the front door to get in the car, only to find our lawn had been mowed. “Hmm, wonder who did that,” I thought.
Our neighbors have been amazing. They didn’t ask about any of these things. They just did them. It was like an unspoken pact. We’re here as long as you need.
Then one day, I realized it was garbage day and drug the can to the street myself. And one day, I noticed my grass was tall, so I mowed it. My brain had caught up to the ordinary. Before that, we were just taken care of.
Cleanliness
One of the best gifts we received came from families from Kushal’s school - a house cleaner. Queue the angelic choir sound effect.
There are several reasons this was an amazing gift. First, a ton of people came through our house for weeks on end. I had no time or energy to clean. Kushal and I also went through a stint of food poisoning, leaving the bathrooms…well, you know. The first cleaning session felt like a gift directly from God.
The second reason this gift was exceptional was that it was long-term. Satish worked from home part-time. He had plenty of time to keep our house tidy. I do not. I’m now a single mom, with a very full-time job. Any guilt or shame I might have been feeling about wanting a house cleaner was swept away. Our friends arranged a person who they knew, trusted, and personally relied on. She was paid for out of a collective pot until the dollars ran out. Then I took over the bill. I now have a house cleaner and it’s such a relief.
Spoiled
Professionally, I’m the Executive Director of a non-profit. One day, our Board Chair dropped off a gift. Inside was a note that said, “Susan, over the next period of time I’m going to spoil you with some of the things that I love.” A pair of expensive socks. Luxurious french body wash. Lipstick. That was all. There was something magical about this gift because it was just for me. Pure enjoyment.
Pens
At the beginning of this post, I said that the best gifts were personal. One of the most moving gifts I received was a box of pens. It came from our marketing team at work. Inside was a note that read,
“We learned you are writing as a way to process, so we thought it fitting as a communication workgroup to support you in this part of your journey. Here is a journal, and each of our favorite pens. We hope they help you in telling your story.”
I stood over the box and wept. At this point, I was still deciding if I was going to post this blog publicly. I was so nervous that my writing wasn’t good enough. I didn’t know how people would react to the rawness of what I had to share. And then the box of pens arrived. This was my moment of knowing.
LEGOS
I will end this post with a cliffhanger. Undoubtedly, the most important gift we received was LEGO. But this deserves its own story. Over the next two weeks (yes it’s a two-parter) I will attempt to share how LEGO has influenced our lives. A warning that this has been the hardest and most emotional story I’ve written yet.
I’ll meet you back here in a week, to begin the saga.