“Life Stories”

My partner's grandmother recently passed away. Although her passing wasn't a complete surprise, it utterly shocked him and his family. Understandably, everyone was devastated. It was hard for me to express my sympathy to them. Every time that I would try, I thought it either sounded like I giving them advice (not what I would want to hear if I were grieving), or inundating them with the same phrases ("I'm so sorry", or worse, "I know how you're feeling"). My heart was in the right place. I just wanted them to know that they were not alone, and that someone cared about their loss. I decided that notes might be a better way to express my condolences. After the funeral, I spent some time in the parking lot distributing notes to each of his aunts, uncles, cousins and his mom under their windshield wipers. Since I am close with his family, and have great memories with them all, the notes contained my favorite moments with each of them. The cool thing was, that I realized that his grandma was in all of the stories in some capacity. I didn't really intend this, but his mom later told me that everyone talked about how it reminded them that stories are how his grandma will live on. Boom Boom!