Hello there friends. About 10 days ago, I had to make a sympathy card for a friend, whose wife was my age and got hit with a sudden brain aneurysm. The news was not good at all. The aneurysm was severe enough for her to be on life support and her husband had to make the horrific decision to terminate life support after a couple of days. He really didn’t have a choice. Even if she recovered, she would have been in a vegetative state and they’ve both talked about what each other wanted if there ever came a time like this. My friend respected his wife’s wishes.
My friend has 2 daughters too, so I had to find a medium between masculine and feminine, and that was not easy, but I think I pulled it off. It’s not so much about the card, but being there emotionally and being a good friend.
I have a black card base, gold glitter paper, a blue flower and Lawn Fawn black and white twine (which is no longer available). I love their twine since it is rather stiff. But, if you have any kind of twine and want to harden it up a bit, simply put some Ranger Multi-Matte Medium on your fingertips, run the twine through them, let it sit overnight, and you have stiff twine that is still pliable enough to work with. I love it.
The flower is more feminine, but is colored blue. I used 4 Prismacolor Colored Pencils to color in the image with Gamsol. The flower is from Stampin’ Up! You’ve Got This and was colored in with only one colored pencil PC905 Aquamarine. The stamen is yellow PC1035 Neon Yellow and I used 2 colors of green on the leaves PC109 Prussian Green and PC1098 Artichoke. I could have easily used Stampin’ Up! Colored Pencils, but honestly, they were buried behind a stack of stuff I have to put away and I didn’t want to just move the stack to another place as putting it away was a chore for today. Pacific Point for the flower and Old Olive for the stems would have worked perfectly with various shading of the pencils to get your colors right.
The entire card was die-cut with Papertrey Ink’s Noted: A2 Scalloped. These dies are fabulous! The white center panel was also cut from the same dies. To get my scalloped edge on the left, I used the side of the A2 die onto gold glitter paper. This one die cut every single panel I used on my card. It’s another must have craft room staple.
It’s a very simple card that is tasteful for the loss of a loved one. I’m not one for Get Well cards, unless it’s a common cold or something. I have juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. I am not going to get well, ever. There are no cures for any autoimmune diseases. I’ll send out an Encouragement, Friendship or a type of I’m Sorry card with my support in those instances. Sending out Sympathy and Encouragement cards seem to be the norm lately; fatal auto accidents, sudden death, heart attacks, strokes, cancer, a new diagnosis of something, long-term illnesses, surgeries, the list goes on and none of it is good.
I’ve stood back and watched these families and how they treated each other. Despite the tremendous pain and suffering of everybody involved, there was one common denominator in every single instance: GENUINE. UNCONDITIONAL. REAL. FAMILY. LOVE. Nobody was intentionally thrown under the bus, dehumanized, eliminated or excluded and then justify their behavior, no matter how cruel it was/is to the one who fell victim to any of the above, and then blamed them for it. I’ve never seen anybody ask to have a heart attack, cancer or a chronic disease. The entire family came together. These families circled the wagons around their loved one. And it made them stronger. And it made them better people. And it taught them more compassion and an every second appreciation of life, a new understanding of respect, fragility and preciousness of life, and how your entire world can change in a second and nothing will ever be the same again. That is what honorable, personal integrity, noble and kind, normal people do who have good hearts when they truly love somebody. It’s instinctual. Everybody just did what they had to do without drama and worked together. I only know of ONE “family” in my entire life who refused to stand in the gap and they were destroyed, in more ways than one.
Hopefully I won’t have to make these types of cards for a while. I hope this helps and gives you some inspiration for an unpleasant situation. Thank you so much for stopping by to visit me today and God bless. Have a wonderful day!
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