I ordered sympathy flowers for a colleague whose father had passed away.
It wasn’t a big decision. It took maybe four minutes—pick an arrangement, add the company card, type a message, done. The kind of thing you do between emails, without thinking too deeply about it.
When I got to the message, I paused for a second.
I almost typed the usual: “Sorry for your loss.”
It’s what everyone writes. It’s safe. Expected. Polite.
But something about it felt… distant. Like it belonged to a script more than a person.
So, at the last second, I changed it.
I wrote: “Thinking of you.”
That was it.
Three simple words.
I didn’t think about it again.
Until two weeks later.
She came to my desk and sat down across from me. There was something in her expression—gentle, but serious.
“Can I ask you something personal?” she said.
I said yes, assuming it might be work-related or something small.
It wasn’t.
She told me she had been reading the card every day since the flowers arrived.
Every day.
Because, she said, nobody else had written that.
Not just those words.
Not without adding something else. Not without filling the space with explanations or formal phrases.
Just that.
Thinking of you.
Then she asked who had written it.
I told her I had.
And in that moment, I realized something I hadn’t understood when I typed those words.
She said it was the only message that felt true to her in those two weeks.
The only one that didn’t feel like it was trying to fix something that couldn’t be fixed. The only one that didn’t feel rehearsed or distant.
It just… sat with her.
Quietly.
The way grief does.
I sat there, not really knowing what to say back.
Because I hadn’t intended anything profound. I hadn’t spent time crafting the perfect message. I had simply followed a small instinct—that maybe less would feel more real.
And somehow, it had.
That moment stayed with me.
It changed the way I think about words.
We often believe we need to say more when something matters. That we need to find the right phrases, the right tone, the right way to make things better.
But sometimes, the most honest thing we can offer isn’t an explanation.
It’s presence.
And sometimes, presence sounds like three simple words.
Thinking of you.
Since then, I’ve never written a condolence card the same way.
I don’t default to what’s expected anymore.
I stop.
I think about the person receiving it.
About what might actually reach them.
Because I’ve learned something I didn’t fully understand before:
Words are not just a formality.
They’re not just something we fill space with.
In moments like that…
They are the whole thing.