It Matters. It Really Does.
May 7 is the second anniversary of my son-in-law Daniel’s death in a car accident on a long stretch of highway in Flagstaff, Ariz. Not an easy day around here, as you can imagine. Especially not for my daughter, who lives with me along with their now 3-year-old little girl.
As I write this, it’s now May. And the feelings are starting to well up. The grief, the sense of loss, the questions and dismay that are still as fresh as they were in 2012.
Two days ago, a direct-mail piece showed up in our mailbox. It was a fundraising appeal from the organization for which my daughter and her husband had been full-time volunteers for a year, up until not long before the accident. They were on the sailing crew that maintained and operated the organization’s small fleet of tall ships and worked hands-on with at-risk kids who came aboard to learn teamwork through sailing. It was also the organization that provided the ship that my daughter and her crew took out to sea to have a memorial and ash-scattering ceremony befitting one of their own, the sailor that my son-in-law was and that my daughter still is at heart.
The piece was either perfectly or unfortunately timed (depending on how you feel about things like this) and upsetting, to be sure. But my daughter has so many levels of fond memories of their time with this organization that it brought a bittersweet smile to her face, as well as the beginning puddles of tears around the rims of her eyes. I watched her quietly as she looked at it, held it in her hands and flicked the corner mindlessly. I watched her slip into some place of simultaneously great pain and great comfort. I watched her reach out to him in her heart and close her eyes when he reached back.
Then she turned over the mail piece, and her face changed. She was back in the moment. And, apparently, quite angry. It was like someone had flipped a switch. “Really? Really?” she asked, incredulous. The fundraising appeal was addressed to Daniel. “How do they not know? Or don’t they care? How [expletive removed] stupid can they be?” She put down the letter and walked off. Hurt. Angry. Confused.
Some people might think she overreacted. If she found some comfort or even some sharply edged sense of peace or reverie in the mailing, what does it matter who it’s addressed to? But I get it. She felt betrayed that this organization they had devoted so much time and energy to apparently didn’t know that her husband was dead. Or didn’t care enough to take his name out of its database. Or, in an ideal world, personalize a letter to her commenting on her loss, on the loss of a fellow crewmate, on the fact that the organization still cares about them and wants her to feel connected, and wants to help her continue to be involved in its great work by making a donation. That would have been both smart and thoughtful fundraising.
Granted, neither Daniel nor my daughter were financial donors, but they were supporters in a big, big way. And seeing this piece in my mailbox, and my daughter’s reaction to it, hurt me on a personal level but also made me cringe on a professional level. And it made me feel the need to write this column and to ask each of you: How clean is your data?
