I find it hard to write a condolence letter, not a note, but a letter. And three condolence letters wait for me. They sit like black crows on a fence, cawing, scolding. I delay, stall, guilt-gnawed and sometimes, I admit, never write the letter in time. Instead, I email or call. Not the same!

My fear is that my condolence will be a minefield of cliches.

I saved a letter from the Palliative Care Social Services counselor at the Motion Picture and Television Home sent after my husband died five years ago. I remembered it avoided the cliches and was a very good letter.

I dug back through my drawer and read it, only to realize it was grief counseling not so much a condolence. A two-page letter of caring, wisdom, and specific psychological guidance for those in grief. It was counseling. Not really a condolence letter.

It was practical and used phrases such as “experiencing death of a loved one makes life less certain and you now might doubt yourself or the assumptions you have long held.” Or this one: “who am I apart from my loved one?”

To counsel in my letter does not seem like a good idea. Well, why not checkout ChatGBT?

Secretly, or not so secretly, I wanted AI to cough up cliches, to reinforce my AI prejudice. Surely AI would flood me with cliches like the trite sympathy cards in drug stores.

I typed in the AI search bar, ‘how to write a condolence letter.’ Up popped the AI answer including bulleted paragraphs. And to my surprise it was quite good, fill-in-the-blank template like a five-paragraph structured essay. Easy. Perfect pitch. It did not feel cliché-infested but intelligent, even warm, and the template included blank space for the personal. Also, it offered a ‘full version.’

Wow. Now it will be much easier to chase away those cawing crows on the letter writing fence.

And yet, I was puzzled. In some strange way I felt robbed. AI had created within me a yawning emptiness.

AI had wiped out my desire to write. The call to forge words of comfort, to reflect, to describe the loved one and share sadness with the deceased’s family. The friend who died too young, so full of life who loved me and my children.

Why should I feel robbed when AI could solve my task? Even assuming a personal and friendly persona offering to help me write it.

After some thought, I concluded it is the very act of writing, the struggle to find the right words that will spark something intangible: the bond, the warmth, the connection to the grieving family. The act of writing creates an internal experience. It is an experience not duplicated by relying on easy AI pre-packaged, processed phrases and templates.

The effort and the time spent—scribbling a draft, putting pen to paper, tearing up drafts.

The friendly AI text: Would you like help drafting a letter based on your specific relationship or the person who passed?

Thank you, AI. Not this time. Then the crows began to chatter.

Trudy Hale is Streetlight Magazine‘s Editor-in-Chief. Born in Memphis, she lived a somewhat chaotic and semi-glamorous life in Hollywood, married to a director and raising their two children. She moved to Virginia and opened Porches Writing Retreat in Nelson County, a retreat that supports and encourages writers of all stripes, regardless of age or checkered past. You can find out more about her on www.porcheswritingretreat.com.