The Beautiful Case for Writing a Letter to Your Facebook Friends

By Amy W. Daughters

I wrote Dana every single week. At the beginning, I didn’t have a designated day for her letter; usually, I just found a few quiet moments during my workweek and penned a card. My remarks were brief, extremely so in comparison with the treatises I would write in the future. I remember clearly having no idea what to say. I knew very little about grief, so I felt strongly that I shouldn’t try to offer up any wise (or, in my case, probably unwise) words on what to feel or not to feel. Instead, I wrote about my life and my family, slowly introducing her to my world. 

This approach was a direct result of my relationship with a neighbor family in Dayton. Sue Shibley and her kids, Lee and Emma, moved in across the street from us just weeks after we relocated to Ohio from Texas. It was also just months after Sue’s husband—a colonel in the US Air Force—had died suddenly, during the family’s latest assignment, in Wichita, Kansas. 

Sue was open with her feelings, willing to explore everyone’s emotional state. She talked freely about the experience of losing her husband so suddenly. She even shared a video that she, Lee, and Emma had made at the grief group they attended. 

Though countless little details made an impression on me, two resonated enough to stick. They also carried over, not by accident, into my budding relationship with the Rivera family. 

First, Sue taught me that it was okay that I didn’t have anything to say about Dana’s grief. She also advised me that it was better just to be honest and say, “That totally sucks,” rather than trying to rely on clichés about some sort of meaningful journey through losing a loved one. 

Next was something that both Sue and her kids mentioned. In the video, Lee and Emma talked about how, right after their dad passed, there were literally hundreds of people on hand, along with cards, food, flowers, and lots of activity. 

Then, suddenly, at some undesignated hour, it all stopped. In Lee’s words, “the casseroles just stopped coming.” 

This laid the foundation for my approach to my letter-writing campaign to Dana. First, I didn’t have any good words about grief—so, for the most part, I never tried to use any. I just focused on relaying the message of my caring and my nonstop praying. Sue’s advice made me feel like this was a viable approach. 

Next, though I knew—and still know, and will always know —that I couldn’t/can’t really do anything for Dana, I could not move on. I could keep the casseroles coming. 

I sent Dana ten cards between January 12 and March 15, all to Jim’s law office in Lafayette. On March 16, 2015, a Monday night, I received a Facebook message from her.