Thank-you notes after a funeral
2 min read
Two things to know before you start, because both remove most of the weight.
There is no deadline. Two or three weeks is usual, two months is fine, and nobody is keeping score. A note that arrives late and means something is better than one sent on time out of duty.
You do not have to write them all yourself. Split the list between family members. Anyone who says they want to help can address envelopes.
Who gets one
- People who sent flowers or gave to the collection.
- Anyone who travelled a long way.
- People who brought food, or looked after the house, or took the children.
- Whoever spoke, read or played at the service.
- The funeral director, the celebrant or clergy, and the medical or care staff who looked after them — frequently forgotten, and these are the notes that are most valued.
People who simply came do not need an individual note. A single message to everyone is enough.
Three templates
For flowers or a donation.
Dear Anne,
Thank you for the flowers, and for being there on Thursday. Mum would have had something to say about the lilies — she always did.
With love, Sarah
For someone who helped.
Dear Peter,
Thank you for driving us that week. I don't think we'd have managed it, and I know you rearranged things to do it.
It meant a great deal. Tom
For care or medical staff.
To everyone on Ward 6,
Thank you for looking after our father in his last weeks, and for the way you spoke to him. He noticed, and so did we.
The Whitfield family
What makes them not sound like a form letter
One specific detail, per note. The lilies. The drive. The thing they said.
That single specific line is the whole difference, and it is the reason a handwritten card beats a well-worded printed one. Everything else can be the same in every note; that line cannot.
If you cannot face it
Plenty of families do not manage individual notes, and that is not a failure.
One message — a card in a local paper, a post, a short note from the family — covers everybody:
The family of Margaret Whitfield would like to thank everyone who came, who sent flowers and messages, and who has been so kind these last weeks. We have read every one.
That last sentence is worth including, because people wonder.
Keep what people sent
Before the cards go in a drawer and the drawer goes in a cupboard: the messages people wrote in the first weeks are the only account of your person written by the people outside your household, and they will never be written again.
Read them once more. Keep the ones that say something. Put them somewhere the rest of the family can read them too — most of them have never seen a single one.