What a card

The other day word began filtering through the masses that the wife of a co-worker had died suddenly over the weekend. It’s very sad. There was no official notice and usually we get one, usually family members people we have never heard of and don't work with. It's a little morbid. We get these pretty frequently as well as directions to the viewing and information about funeral arrangements. We didn't get anything for this man, another co-worker opined that maybe it was because he's Greek and they do things different. The stupid, it burns.

We all were waiting on the notification so we could get him cards. We’re big card senders. I think it’s because this is a female dominated work place, if it were all men, cards would be a non-issue, I assume there would be a lot of nodding and shoulder thumping or something. I would imagine that men in groups aren’t big with sending cards. I mean someone has to go to the card store - Have you ever seen a man at a card store? They might as well be tampon outlets. The guy would have to look though every single card in the store, dither over the various messages, dither some more, get disgusted with card selection, go to another card store, dither more, call back to the office, dither over the phone, buy one, hate it and then organize everyone to sign it then get it to the recipient. It’s just not a guy thing. Guys dither sure, but you don’t see them dithering in the card stores. It’s a shame, it can be very cathartic, you find out exactly how you feel about the person, it's like a pop test of your relationship status.

Anyway. He didn’t work in our department so we don’t have to get a group card. It’s going to be up to the individuals to decide if they want to get him a card. I want to get him a card and finally they sent out the notice with his address and I can get him a card. Good.

So now I had plans for lunch.

So a-card-hunting I went. One, sympathy cards are hidden and hard to find. Because there is nothing you want to do more when you are in the market for sympathy cards then to spend a lot of time wading through Birthday/Congrats on The New Baby/Happy Wedding/Happy Holiday cards. And two, then you finally run across them and they all suck. They suck and they’re all ugly! glance at the Happy Whatever cards and everyone of them is pretty and at the very least pleasant to look at. Sympathy cards are ugly and badly designed. I know no one wants to get these and that nobody spends a lot of time studying them when they do get them but come on!

I finally found the Sympathy section and was underwhelmed. They were all too wordy, or too touchy-feely, or too sweet and not a single one was in anyway masculine – Which struck me as odd, they go out of their way to make sure that His birthday card is plaid and decorated with ducks and you would never find a Fathers Day card embellished with flowers, why aren’t there sympathy cards designed for grieving men?

I did finally find one that didn’t make me nauseous and also, I wanted to eat lunch over my lunch hour. I took the card to the front and do you have any idea how much it costs? $4.99! I had to ask the girl how many she was charging me for. I took the card out to the car and looked at it again, I could do better than this. The faux photo on the front was no worse than what I can do. I picked conservatively at the image to see how it was attached and if I could neatly unattached it. I started to run through my mental Rolodex of photos, I went back to work and checked my Fotopages to see if I had anything that could pass as funereal.

Not a damn thing. The poor man just lost his wife and I was tying to decide which picture of which tree came off as the most sympathetic. And? I decided that I was making this about me and I needed to stop. I’m going to mail the card as is. Nope, changed my mind. I found a very nice, highly sympathetic picture of some water lilies taken on an over cast day.