Dear Miss Manners: Who should receive a thank-you note for having attended a wake and/or a funeral?
As the person to whom respects are being paid is not in a position to write, no such letter is necessary. Miss Manners notes that the bereaved have quite enough to do in thanking those who have been kind to them by writing letters, bringing meals or otherwise being useful.
Dear Miss Manners: I invited a friend and her husband to dinner after my husband and I had been to a lovely dinner at their home. My note said how much we'd love to have them join us and, being aware that she is always exceptionally busy, I asked her to let us know what their availability was in the next couple of weeks so we would be able to find an agreeable date for the event.
I had expected a response something like "next week is filled, but we are free Wednesday and Friday the next." Several weeks went by and I received no response to this inquiry, and was a little perplexed because I heard from her on other matters via text, phone and email.
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I then invited her to join me for lunch and she did respond, so we had a nice lunch at a restaurant. During the meal, I asked her if she'd gotten our invitation to dinner. She responded that she had received it but had not replied because my inquiry said, "let us know your availability in the next couple of weeks." She did not say it exactly, but the implication was that this was not a real invitation and so she chose not to respond.
Was I in error in my invitation? Should I have picked an exact date only to have her respond, as I know she would have, "Oh dear, we are busy on that date"? I was just trying to be considerate of their schedules and had hoped to avoid the endless back-and-forth of choosing dates that didn't work for her.
Shouldn't she at least have responded? I felt hurt that my invitation to come to dinner at my home didn't deserve even a simple phone call or email to say, "We'd love to come but would prefer that you pick the date." Now I don't really feel like inviting them at all. Your thoughts?
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That your friend interpreted your invitation as the often used, “We must get together sometime,” which is generally understood to mean “or maybe never.” And that she did not feel obliged to hand over her entire date book.
Share this articleShareMiss Manners realizes that you meant only to defer to your friend’s schedule, but neither does she feel that the lack of response was intended as a snub. Please try again, volunteering your availability (“We would be delighted if you could come to us — is the 18th or the 24th possible?”) instead of asking for theirs.
Dear Miss Manners: My 25-year-old daughter seems to think that since this isn't her home, she shouldn't have to clean the house. Any part of it.
Ask her, then, where exactly her home is. And whether she would kindly let you stay there.
New Miss Manners columns are posted Monday through Saturday on washingtonpost.com/advice. You can send questions to Miss Manners at her website, missmanners.com.
2019, by Judith Martin
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