Most people find the piece easier than the note. The box can be chosen, paid for and sent; the two lines inside it have to be written by someone standing outside the situation, which is what makes them hard.
Seven openings
None of these are clever. They are simply the ones that tend to arrive well.
1. Use the animal’s name
“Pet” is a category. The name is a particular animal, and it is the one thing in the card that proves you knew which one.
People avoid the name for fear of causing pain. It is more often the part that confirms the animal was real to somebody outside that house, which is most of what a card is for.
Example: I was so sorry to hear about Rufus. Nothing else is needed in that sentence. If you are unsure of the spelling, check an old message before you write it in ink.
2. Say one particular thing you remember
Sympathy language is generic because it has to fit everyone. A memory cannot be generic, so it does the work the rest of the card cannot.
One detail is enough, and one sentence is better than a paragraph. You are not proving you have a story; you are showing that the animal existed somewhere other than that house.
Example: I still think about the way he used to sit on the back step in the rain, refusing to come in.
Keep it to the animal alive and doing something ordinary. Do not describe the last weeks, and do not describe the death. They were there for that part. You are writing about everything else.
3. Do not reach for “at least”
“At least he had a long life.” “At least she is not in pain now.” “At least you still have the other one.” Each of those is arithmetic, and the sum is always the same: the loss is smaller than it feels.
Nobody writes it to be unkind. It is what people say when they want to offer something up and have only a comparison to hand.
If the life was long and good, say that as a fact rather than as consolation. Example: Fourteen years is a long time, and I know how well he was looked after. Same information, no sum.
4. Do not compare the loss to a human death, in either direction
“I know it is not the same as losing a person” shrinks the loss on the reader’s behalf. “It is like losing a child” makes a claim about their family that you cannot make for them — some find it exactly right, some cannot bear it, and you cannot know which before you write.
The card does not need a ranking. You can say the loss is real without measuring it.
Example: There is no scale for this. I am simply sorry.
The rule holds in the other direction too. If you have lost a person and they have lost an animal, do not sort the two losses while writing to them.
5. Do not ask how they are doing
“How are you?” has no usable answer. The truthful one is bad, and the polite one means reassuring you, which turns the card into a small task.
A statement does the same job and asks nothing back.
Example: You do not have to reply to this. I have been thinking about you and about Bess.
The same applies to “how are the children taking it”, and to any question with a heavy answer.
6. Write what you have done, not what they should do
“Let me know if you need anything” hands the decision to the person least able to make one. It is the sentence most often meant sincerely and least often acted on.
Instructions are worse. “You should take some time off.” “You should get out of the house.” Well meant, and they arrive as a list of things the person has not managed.
If you can do something, say what you have already done. Example: I have taken Thursday afternoon off and I will walk Nell at four. No need to answer.
If you cannot do anything practical, drop the offer rather than soften it. I cannot do much from here, but I am thinking about you.
7. Keep it short, and write it by hand
Two to four lines. Handwritten if your handwriting is legible, because it is the part that cannot be generated and the part people notice.
A short card that asks for nothing is easier to receive than a long one that expects a reply. If you have more to say than fits, say it in person later. A card’s job is narrower than a conversation’s.
Sign it, and put the animal’s name in it. Do not use a printed verse from the back of the card. Those are written for everybody, and they read that way.
What not to write
- “It was only a dog.” The word “only” is doing all the damage. If you believe it, a card is not the place to say so.
- “At least…” As above. It converts a loss into a comparison, and the comparison always runs one way.
- “Everything happens for a reason.” That is a claim about the reason, made by someone who has not been told what it is.
- “They are in a better place.” You may well mean the rainbow bridge, which is fine if it is already the person’s own language. If it is not, it lands as somebody else’s belief, delivered unasked.
- “You will get another one.” Not in the card, and not in the first months. It is usually about the asker’s discomfort rather than the reader’s future.
- “I know exactly how you feel.” Even when it is true, it moves the card towards your own loss. “I am sorry” does not have that problem.
- Anything that needs an answer. A question, an update request, a “let me know when you have a moment”. Each becomes a debt with a stamp on it.
- Anything about the gift. Not the price, not where it came from, not what it is made of, and not an explanation of why you chose it. If the note has to explain the object, the object was the wrong one.
One practical thing. If the piece is being posted straight to them, send the card separately rather than inside the parcel, so the two land in the same week. An object with no note at all is entirely respectable; an object with a printed verse is not.
The card is the part that gets kept
The object is the part people talk about. The card is the part that stays in the drawer — in its envelope, in your handwriting, long after the piece itself has settled into the room and stopped being a new thing. It is worth two more minutes than you think it is.
If you are buying the piece too, the gifts section is written for somebody ordering on another person’s behalf, which is a different job from ordering for yourself.
The Mini Keepsake is the one that arrives without requiring a decision from the person receiving it: a needle-felted sculpture of the animal, roughly palm-sized, made from one clear photograph, from $329. It takes six to fourteen weeks, so the card is the part that arrives first. Memorial pieces are ordered all the time by somebody other than the person they are for, and this is the smallest version of that.
Write the card first. It is the part that stays.
One letter a month
Occasional notes from the studio: new pieces, what we are working on, and the questions customers ask most. No offers, and you can leave at any time.
