The Sympathy Card

　
 Living in a sleepy little town has it's moments, when you happen to be the only shop in town. Well, the only full service, flowers to crafts, that is. A few antiques spattered about and paper products. Hanging around the shop waiting for business can be a tiresome way to spend the day, so whenever a customer comes in ringing the bell on the door, you jump to attention with, How can I help you? Mostly they just want to browse, and you get back to the boring task you had been working on before the bell woke you up.
Now, most days would go along like this, with friends and neighbors dropping by to see what was new, and just a bit of nosey too. The bell just jingling with each hand that opened the door. So mostly, you would just lean back in the doorway to peek at who had come in, while still sitting on your stool. Friends would join you in the work room in the back, or a possible customer would walk around the creaky old floors admiring all the wares. They were mostly tourists, that had taken the ferry over and found that other than a restaurant, there was little else to spend any time on here. So they would look around, and look around some more, and sometimes buy a few things. The days that you had a big sale or two were wonderful, and you bought lunch for everybody!

Most of the days went by pretty much the same, until the day...
My friend, and partners husband came crashing into the shop! His face was red from the hurry he was in, and he was out of breath. We just knew that something terrible had happened. Our thoughts went straight to, someone had gotten hurt on the farm they owned. We stood stock still, waiting for the news, not moving a muscle.
He was yelling, and it was so loud we couldn't understand what he was saying. Finally he told us to hurry up and get some sympathy flowers done and take them to the home of a friend. The man had just died and they were going to take his body up to the mountains for burial. He finally calmed down, after getting this conveyed to us. Now, being a very small business, in a very small town, this was an unusual request on so short a notice. We went to the cooler to see if we even had enough flowers on hand. He wanted a full basket sent, and he was adamant about it. Well, as luck would have it we did have enough, and we set about getting it done. He stood over us the whole time telling us to hurry.

Somehow I just couldn't see what the big hurry was, the guy wasn't going anywhere that fast. I did all that I could to hurry though, with him under my feet and checking each flower that went in the basket,leaning over my shoulder. He wanted the card to be special too. Sympathy cards were actually pretty much one way, sympathy. There just wasn't much you could do to change that. So, handing him a card and telling him to write anything he thought appropriate, I continued working as rapidly as I could.

Finally we have it made to his satisfaction and we reach over to hand it to him. He backs up, and tells us to deliver it. We do not deliver. He heads out the door, yelling at his wife to hurry up! Fine, we lock the shop and head to the house of the man that had died, with this big basket of flowers and a sympathy card stuck in the front of it.
Pulling into the driveway it seemed strange that there weren't any cars there. You would have thought that by now, the family would have gathered, and they were a large family at that. We go to the door and his daughter answers it, good, we know her.

My friend smiles and we sit the flowers on the porch between us, she begins to tell the daughter how sorry we were to hear about her father. She says thank you, she appreciates it and proceeds to tell us that he might come home tomorrow. My friend shifts from one foot to the other while I stand there mute. What did she say, I ask myself? She continues, they think it's heart, but he will be fine. Well, at this, my friend has a strange sound coming from her throat, kind of a gurgle, no words, just that kind of drowning sound.
No words were coming out of her mouth however, and as I continued to stand still as mouse, my mind raced! What do we do? How do we fix this? We are caught in this mire of a really bad situation,and sinking rapidly. How do we get out of this? My brain is frozen, which isn't as bad as my friends voice, at least it is quiet! She is mumbling something under her breath, that even I can't understand, and her eyes are darting all around her, as if planning an escape. 

Suddenly, I know what to do! I bend my knees and slowly get down low enough to reach the card, without even bending forward, I'm short. I have it! It's in my hand, I pull it out of the foam it is stuck in, and hide it behind my back. My friend was considerably taller than me and could never have pulled this off without a giant bending of her frame. I never stopped looking at the daughter the whole time. Her eyes follow me down and back up, she sees my hand cover the card and pull it out, and she never stopped talking, watching everything I do.
My friend is now looking down behind my back, realizing I have the card there, she begins to laugh, and smile. She quickly tells the daughter goodbye and we leave, almost running, actually we did run, with the flowers still sitting on the porch and the daughter waving at us, and wondering I'm sure, what in the world was going on.

As soon as I pull out of the drive and onto the pavement, my friend screams, I am going to kill him! Now, I knew what she was saying, but no one else could have understood those guttural sounds, words sounding like a whale rising out of the ocean and blowing water to the sky! She was so mad, she had to blow her nose. I, being me, began to laugh, in uncontrollable seizures of laughter. I did this for the rest of the ride back to the shop, tears running down my face, and my friend stewing and burning, anxious to get her hands on her husband.
Now I wasn't allowed to witness the two of them when she got home, but I have always had a very vivid picture of how it went for him. Poor man!

The friend did die, fifteen years later.
To this day, I can still the eyes of my friend as she realizes, eyes almost sinking back into her head, that the guy didn't die that day, and we have delivered, funeral flowers for the family.