What to give someone who has lost a husband or a parent
Most sympathy and condolence gifts are chosen to relieve the giver, which is why so many gift ideas miss. The ones that get kept do something different: they say the person mattered, or they take a job off the list.
Two things that are always right
If you read nothing else, these are the two that grieving people mention years later.
- Food
- Real meals that need nothing done to them, in containers nobody has to return. Leave it on the step and say so. Grief removes the ability to plan dinner long before it removes the need to eat.
- A written memory
- A specific story about the person who died, in your handwriting. It gives them something they did not have. People keep these in drawers for decades and reread them.
Good gifts, roughly by what they do
- Takes a job away. A cleaner for a month. The lawn cut. A supermarket delivery already paid for. Petrol. Someone to sit with the paperwork, which after a death is genuinely enormous and almost nobody offers.
- Keeps the person present. A framed photograph they do not already have. A tree, if they have somewhere to put one. A donation in the person's name to something they cared about.
- Company. Two tickets to something ordinary, in a month's time, with you attached. A standing Tuesday walk. Grief is lonelier at week eight than week one.
- Warmth. A good blanket, an unscented candle, decent tea. Small and undemanding, and useful on a day when nothing else is.
- Something to write in. A blank notebook, or a journal with prompts if they would rather be asked than face an empty page.
What to be careful with
- Strong scents
- Grief and smell are tangled together. A scented candle can ambush someone. Unscented is safer.
- Anything engraved with a date
- Some people want the date of death on an object. Many do not, and it cannot be undone. Names are safer than dates.
- Ashes jewellery, urns, anything that needs a decision
- These are deeply personal and can be very welcome, but they should be chosen by the bereaved person rather than given as a surprise.
- Flowers, after the first fortnight
- Lovely, and they die, and someone has to deal with the water. In the first week they are right. After that, food is better.
- Books about stages, closure, or moving on
- The most common misfire. A grieving person is not looking for instructions on finishing. See below.
If they lost a husband or wife
The practical load is heavier than people outside the house realise: the paperwork, the accounts, the car, the pension, every form that asks for a signature from someone who is dead. Help with any of that is worth more than an object.
Meals for one are a particular kindness. So is an invitation that expects nothing, and that stays open if they cancel twice.
If they lost a parent
Grief for a parent is often minimised, by everyone including the person feeling it. Treat it as a real loss and you will be one of the few who did.
Photographs are especially good here, because adult children frequently have very few pictures of their parent as a younger person. If you have one, print it and send it.
How much to spend
Less than you think. Nothing in this category is improved by being expensive, and an expensive gift can leave someone feeling they owe a thank-you note they do not have the energy to write.
Give the thing that says: I remember them, and I am not going anywhere.
When to give it
Everything arrives at once and then nothing arrives at all. If you can only do one thing, do it in the second or third month, when the house has gone quiet and the casseroles have stopped.
The anniversary and the birthday are the two dates nobody else marks. Anything that lands on those days is remembered.
If a book is the right gift
The Second Heart was written for anyone who has lost someone they love. It has short chapters, no stages, no closure and no homework, and it can be opened at any page. It is deliberately non-denominational, so it suits someone of any faith or none.
This is the book people give when they do not know what to say.