Thank You Guilt

I'm good, I think (I hope), at thanking people for their kind gestures and thoughtfulness in person.  I'm even often good at writing thank you notes for occasions such as birthdays and holidays.  Though come to think of it, I've been lacking in this area recently.  Maybe because we work closely with our young children on these tasks?  I'm not at all good about hand writing notes of any kind "just because".

This Friday marks the 17 month anniversary of a major life altering event for our family.  Since we are still "in the middle of it" 17 months sounds a whole lot longer than it feels.  At the time right after the accident we had an amazing outpouring of support.  It was amazing and indescribable.  All I can hope is that other families going through hard times have that same kind of support around them.

It was clearly an overwhelming time in our lives.  It was a time where all of our energy was focused on healing our daughter and taking care of the physical and emotional needs of all of our children.  Then we were forced to give attention to our own emotional healing as well.  As time marched on we would take care of only the absolute necessities as our focus was on healing.

All the while I'm playing our own personal episode of Intervention in my head because we didn't take care of things as we should have.  Cue cute baby picture followed by tragic story line and all the ways the parents F'd up that sent the child down a path of hell. :)

So all that's an excuse and to this day I still feel guilty (sometimes more than others, today being more) about not hand writing thank you notes to everyone.  We thanked everyone in person. There were very few hand written notes and even a few e-mails of thanks sent out.  We did journal (almost) all of our visitors, phone calls, the numerous gifts brought to the hospital, brought to our home, and sent in the mail.  I'm pretty sure we left the drivers numerous gifts off that list!  We were prepared to send out formal thank you notes, we just couldn't.   

This is all heightened for me at the moment because of my experience witnessing another family go through a tremendous situation that has to be much more difficult than our own experience.  The mom lost her husband in a tragic accident that also severely injured her almost 3yr old and 8 yr old while she was at home with their 5m old... on the first day of school.  Oh, and the other drivers BAC was 4x the limit at 8am.  He was on his way to work!  In just 2 short months after the accident she writes... 

"I was getting excited that I finished off a roll of 100 stamps...until I realized that I'm probably only about 1/3 into the notes that I need to write of those that I "know" I need to thank.  I wish I knew more of the service rendered so I could thank people, but it's really impossible I suppose."

We were the recipient of one of those very nice notes.  Then I felt guilty that she dedicated her time to writing me.

I can't imagine.  We totally felt the need to thank folks for their generosity.  Words couldn't possibly express our gratitude.  But at first it felt impossible to hold it all together and to write these notes.  At whatever point it became physically and emotionally possible to do so, so much time had passed and so many people (or everyone) had moved on. 

But now that I've got some distance I wonder if we did the "right thing".