When Deepest Sympathy just doesn’t say enough

My friend’s dad died a few days ago. Such a lovely man. One of those characters you take entirely for granted as you’re growing up; only when you look back, with 40 years’ perspective, do you realise that he was the best kind of Englishman.

A gruff Northerner, on the surface at least, Lawrence was generally to be found, all those aeons ago, champing on his pipe and smiling in fond amazement at his all-female household. He was dry as toast and lugubrious with it. When my mother passed on his response to one of my columns – “Tell Allison I agree with every bloody word!” – I never wanted, nor needed, any other fan.

Looking at the cards in the supermarket, I hoped to find one that would convey some of those feelings to his wife, but they all seemed so formal and chilly. There’s an incredible variety of cards for every possible occasion, but not death. “With Deepest Sympathy.” Who speaks like that any more?

In a less formal age, do we even know how to react to death? According to a study by Co-op Funeralcare, people are increasingly posting responses to a bereavement online, with more than one in eight adults saying they have used social media to announce a death. So strong is the trend that it’s likely such cards won’t exist a generation from now.

That seems a pity. Facebook allows users to express their feelings at length – look at Santa Montefiore who posted such a beautiful, bittersweet eulogy to her sister, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson. “I hope the angels wrap their wings around you, because, although you shrank from embraces in life, you need to be hugged. You really do.”

Still, there’s nothing like a flock of cards to tell a bereaved person that their loss is shared. Card manufacturers just need to come up with something more empathic than Deepest Sympathy for our emotionally literate age. I wrote to my friend to say that her Dad so clearly lives on in her son, his grandson. And in that way, love and goodness never die.