HELP, what on earth do i write on good-bye card?

[honneybunny]

I desperately need help with this one: lovely colleage at work will leave his job at the end of the month on "extended sickleave", as he has been given max. 6 months by doctors. He's very young, with 3 dd-s, and my dh and i are both completely knocked back by this. There is a good-bye card in the office, and there's been an emsil to write on this card thingd to remind him of happier times at X, but writing all sorts of lovelies seems to me such a harsh thing...
Please help me out, what on earth do I write..?

Personally on the office card I would write something generic- i'll really miss working wioth you or something like that- then get a card (handmade if you can get it, try the craft threads) and write something far mre personla- that you're sorry he's so ill, that you will miss working with him, and that you hope he'll keep in touch. You might find a poem that works?

Could you write something that would remind him of a particularly pleasant time that you both shared at work? Just to let him know that he will be missed for who he is and not for what his role was at work.

How sad honneybunny - agree with peachyclair.

Thank you for your kind words of advice. I think it is a very good suggestion by PeachyClair too. It's just that life is so unfair sometimes.... he's in his mid-thirties.

Honey - how awful.
Does your colleague have children? I only ask because a colleague of mine died in his mid 30's leaving 2 young children. We wrote messages for him but also gave him a little book of anecdotes about stuff that had happened at work and suchlike for him to pass onto his kids if he wanted to and when the time was right for his wife to do so. The htinking was that it would flesh out family and friends' recollections of their father and let them see another aspect of who he was and what his colleagues thought about him.
May not be appropriate - just an idea. Good luck with this difficult one.

THis may be a bit premature, but when my mum died unexpectadly, the office did a condolance book, but it was full of little snippets about her friendships with her colleagues and funny things they had got up to..... like one guy saying how they couldnt stop laughing when huddled under an umbrella on a fag break, mum lit the wrong end of a ciggie!

It really helps to look back and remember the good times she had.

I would go with the good time feel good comment, and then a seperate card.

Yes, spub, he has 3 dd-s, youngest is just 3 yo!

poor family

It's so sad. I do think doing something for his kids to have to look at in the longer term might be a nice way of them keeping their dad's memory going in a more 3-D way provided he and his wife agree.
Best of luck.

When my beloved manager left (not in these circumstances) I arranged for everyone to write a short note about how he had made the place better, more pleasant or more inspiring. Then I laminated them into a book. He said he hadn't realised that people had even remembered some of the stuff they wrote about and he would read it if he ever had a bad day.

It will be a wonderful thing for his children in years to come to read how much their dad was loved for his specific qualities.