We have so many ways of communicating these days apart from writing a letter: phone, text, email, online ‘chat,’ WhatsApp, Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram and so on. No wonder the Post Office is putting up the price of stamps, despite offering a choice of first and second-class postage, and a range of tracking services. And there are cards available to match every event – from Christmas greetings and Dads’ day cards to celebrating a divorce.
We may mourn the loss of the skill applied in writing letters, especially hand-written ones, but we have to accept that most other means of communication are both faster and cheaper. Even old-fashioned maiden great-aunts have come to accept that a phone call – or even a Facebook message -thanking aunty for a birthday gift, is perfectly fine these days. One must after all move with the times.
There is one occasion, though, when a letter may be the only suitable option. That is a letter of condolence. For simply acknowledging the passing of an acquaintance’s partner / parent, many will send a sympathy card. However, if you are communicating with the relative of someone you knew well, especially if you are not be able to attend the funeral, then a hand written missive should be considered. Inevitably, the next question is – what should one say?
Sir John Tusa, whose wife, the historian Ann Tusa, died last year, endorses the power of a letter of condolence, including the purely formal ones, which can none-the-less be hard to compose when trying to get the tone right.
A ‘no-no,’ he says, is to include in a letter of condolence any advice on how to grieve. So also is too much bracing talk about ‘getting over it soon.’ What he appreciated were shared reminiscences and recollections of good times the writer had had with his late wife; letters that tried to capture her essential character; and ones where the writer was able to share their own experience of grief – ‘a huge iceberg of grief in my heart, but it melted slowly through the love of family and friends’ – which helped him understand his own.
It is worth making the effort to get out pen and paper to write a letter of condolence. Sir John truly appreciated all the letters he received. His only caveat was that some were so warm and moving about what a wonderful person Lady Ann had been, he wished they had been sent before she died so that she too would have had a chance to read them and know how much all who knew her had loved her.
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