"On Your Loss...."

I needed a sympathy card. A husband of a friend of another friend of mine 3000 miles had passed away.

Now, back in the days of my youth, this would not have been a problem. You see, my mother kept an endless supply of sympathy cards in a drawer. She was ready for any demise at any time. And, she didn't keep them generic. Nope, she had them for all occasions. The loss of your son. The loss of your father. You name it. Her friends all did the same thing. I am convinced that, when my own mother passed on, I got a sympathy card that was customized "On the Loss of Your Kent-Smoking, Lotto-Playing Mom...."

But, I was not lucky enough to have a...ahem, endless supply of sympathy cards on hand. I was also stupid enough to think that my roommate might. I walked into his room and interrupted his concentration on his crossword puzzle.

"Have you got a spare sympathy card lying around?"

He looked at me like there was a chimpanzee dressed like Fred Astaire perched on top of my head. I moved on.

When it comes to greeting cards, I am old school. I like the hard copy. The envelope arriving with a stamp in the upper right hand corner. The sloppy penmanship scrawling out the address. Yes, I have gravitated a bit toward the online birthday greetings. But, on the loss of a loved one, I didn't want to use Hallmark.com. There would be nothing worse than this grieving person to get an e-mail that exclaimed "Somebody has just sent you a greeting!"

Now it shouldn't have been so hard to go out and get a sympathy card. But, I didn't want to go to the mall and use the appropriate greeting card store. Certainly, there was someplace nearby that would be just as easy a conduit. Ralph's Supermarket. Walgren's Drugstore. The convenience rack at the 76 gas station.

No, no, and definitely no.

The card counter at Ralph's was adorned with party favors. And the sympathy card section found most of the cards attached to balloons. I wondered to myself what kind of funeral would feature a rented clown. I decided not to go through the trouble of unattaching the balloons. I moved on.

Walgren's had very few sympathy cards. And the ones they had were all the same. "Condolences on the death of your baby." Huh? Had I missed the story about the crib death epidemic in today's LA Times?

The gas station was my last resort. No sympathy cards. Only get well greetings. Obviously, at the 76 station, everyone recovers from their illnesses.

So, I tried to be economical with my time and my gas. And eventually blew one whole hour and probably 15 dollars of SUV-guzzled fuel before I realized that I needed to go to the card store. In the mall.

I bought five extra cards and put them in a drawer at home. Like my mother, I will be ready for you.

Dinner last night: Cervelat on English Muffin.