Cancer Get Well Cards

Greeting card keepers cherish the memories they bring back

09.01.10

Amber Dickensheets retained all combining maps gave her and her husband, Mark, seven years ago. She tied them with tape and placed them in a gray box. </ P> It has also recorded all the cards her son baby shower, cards his parents sent him over the years and everyone that she and her husband have already exchanged. </ P> This includes the "I'm Stark" card she packed in her luggage when they took their first trip together, just in case. (She has never had to use it.) </ P> Amber Dickensheets is an unashamed fan greeting cards.</ P> You've seen them or they may know. Maybe you are. </ P> These are the people who stand for hours in the card aisle looking for the perfect <em> </ em> hello. </ P> They are sentimental souls who Stash old greeting cards into albums, photo albums, shoe boxes, and offices under their socks in the dresser drawers. </ P> Sometimes, as museum curators, they treat them in acid-free laptops and executives turn to their same vacation spot in braids.</ P> And you can almost always identify one or order it means the most. </ P> Some of those who can not bear the idea of sending their old card to the discharge have given their collections to Hallmark in a safe place. The group, which celebrates 100 years in business this month, is happy to oblige (see page 13). </ P> In the words of an index card keeper admitted: "Why would we throw 'away guards? Sheesh!" </ P> Dickensheets, woman boy and his mother is on its way to amass a personal archive of his.</ P> "I do not think it's been a rat pack," said Dickensheets, who works in marketing and development issue for Assurant Employee Benefits. "It's about a memory. The reason these things are leading is that you do not want to lose this piece of someone they have shared and given to you. "</ P> It is for Ladora Lattimore, another card Greeting native fan. </ P> Lattimore, executive director of Friends of Yates, a social service agency in Kansas Burg, Kan., Saved as a card around his home and office she can not remember where they all are. </ P> "Some call it hoarding, but I want them for sentimental reasons, & rdquo; Lattimore said." I'm going back to my card and they give me all the insistence that I need. " </ p> The more expensive cards came from his mother, Earnestine Pilcher, who died of a heart attack 18 years ago, before Lattimore could see their life a comfort last.</ P> His mother is gone, but Lattimore can still see the writing of his mother in the notes she wrote on the inside. </ P> "I return to these cards, and she is fitting right there with me," she said. "It's almost as if you can answer. He gets it." </ P> Feature writers saw and heard for themselves how emotional people know about the cards when they visited the country several years ago to talk to customers.</ P> People from all walks of life have told stories about the cards can not forget, maps that years later can still make you smile, laugh and even cry. </ P> There were the cards of the husband in New York, nestled in its fight suitcase when she traveled on business. The map of Winnie the Pooh college student from Wisconsin received from his mother and carried in his backpack. </ P> A cancer survivor boob in Georgia told to keep all his "get well" cards in a box in his bedroom closet.</ P> A woman in Kansas told how to coax the victim of an attack with speech problems, had become the best picker-outer of cards because they can communicate feelings that can not vocalize.

Source: Kansas City Star