One of life’s most challenging situations is knowing what to do when someone you love loses someone they love.
The truth is many of us don’t know how to help someone grieving
We don’t realise it, but that extreme discomfort we feel when another human falls apart due to grief right in front of us, is not ‘innate’. It’s years of training in prioritising ‘busyness’.
Training to forget what it means to be a person sitting with another person feeling all the feels. Being told ‘sensitivity’ is a failure and that we shouldn’t let ’emotions’ get in the way of… whatever it is they apparently get in the way of.
What does this then mean when we are faced with ‘being there’ for someone who has lost a loved one?
When everything we’ve ‘learned’ goes out to window in the face of raw deep wild crazy confusing messy heart-wrenching loss? We may find judgement creeping in as we feel annoyed- why can’t they just get over it? Deal with it? And yet… the day will come when it is you in their place.
Something I hear regularly as an online counsellor from the bereaved is that other people’s reactions are one of the things that make losing someone so hard. Typical reactions to the news of a death can range from ‘so-formal-it-is-meaningless’ to ‘sobbing-uncontrollably-as-though-it-was-your-loss-and-not-ours’.
Let’s be honest with each other. That’s just not really good enough is it?
Because it is CERTAIN that one day it will be you struggling to cope with a death. In fact, there is nothing more certain. You’ll notice all these things other people say about what was hard for them.
You’ll feel alone and stuck and wish someone knew what to do.
What if that person was YOU?!
Now. Today. Knowing what to do when someone you love loses someone they love.
As a counsellor talking with people who have been deeply irrevocably rocked by a significant death, it strikes me if we did this dying thing better, we could all have a better experience of losing someone.
Here are 9 things you can do to help ease someone’s struggles in grief:
1. When you send a card, do not write ‘i’m sorry for your loss’
Share a memory of the person. If you didn’t know them but you know the mourners, write something about them and how the dead person would have been proud of such-and-such (something unique and specific, not generic). Here are some more options if you feel stumped.
2. If you offer to help, tell the person what you are offering to do (don’t ask)
We ALL say ‘if there’s anything I can do…’ but most people in shock don’t know what they want or need. Recall times when you’ve needed support (or someone you know has) and offer that.
Cook a meal and bring it over; do a load of laundry; pay for a cleaner for a month; help them with paperwork; book in to go for a walk on a set day/week; take the kids to school or pick them up; stay in their spare bed for a few nights and binge some teev together; clear out a cupboard.
Arrange to text every second day. And then DO IT. Do not forget. Even if they don’t write back. Even if it’s just a dumb gif or a distraction or a ‘hope you’re okish today, but if not I have a free texting hand’.
3. If you say ‘how are you feeling today?’ make sure you are prepared to listen
Just listen, without judgment or fixing. If it’s not really your bag, you don’t need to get all emotional and touch the persons arm when they’re talking. You can just listen and offer reflections or ask thoughtful questions. Let them process it themselves.
4. If you ask a stranger a seemingly innocuous question, then be prepared for whatever their answer may be
One example that folks have discussed in counselling with me is ‘do you have children?’
Consider what you would do if the person responds with something unexpected that feels ‘confronting? Such as ‘Yes but she died two years ago. She was only six’. You sure better be prepared to stay and have that conversation.
Be mindful that ANY ‘innocuous’ question can be painful for some people. Similar to asking anyone ‘how are you?’… It’s perfectly ok to ask, but don’t be shocked or frustrated or look for the escape button if the answer isn’t what you’d expected. Listen, provide care, don’t immediately talk about yourself, and be ‘kindly curious’ about the person’s experience.
If you find yourself tearing up that’s fine, you’re sharing in their pain. So long as your fear/sadness doesn’t take away from the person who has experienced the death.
5. Don’t compare your losses to theirs
Especially if they have nothing in common with one another (your dearly loved Grandpa and their dearly loved six year old have nothing to do with each other, I promise, even if you feel they do). There will come a time when you can talk about your losses but this is probably not it.
If you have something genuinely useful to offer from your own experience, wait for the right time and share it. But don’t be surprised if the person doesn’t immediately feel better or their pain doesn’t magically go away (like on TV). If whatever you say helps them feel seen, supported, and less alone that’s often the best outcome.
6. Do ask and talk about the dead
Not just at the funeral but at other times. Especially other times. Everybody stops asking after the first couple of weeks, or they may avoid the mourners if it’s an especially ‘shocking’ loss. You don’t need to go on about it, but don’t pretend as though nothing has happened.
You can open with something like ‘I was thinking about Toby today…’ and see if the person picks up your invite. Don’t freeze like a rabbit in headlights if they bring up the dead either. Let the name come out into the space between you and see what stories can be written there.
7. Try to have ZERO expectations about how the person ‘should’ feel
Some people have mixed feelings about a dead person- they may have even hated them. Or loved and hated them at the same time. Or they are angry at them.
If someone you love loses someone they love (and hate and everything in between), sorting through all of those feelings is crucial in grieving. Yet folks often feel guilty if they don’t feel the ‘correct’ thing and so they don’t talk about it. Or worse, they get told off when they do.
Relationships are complicated. Not everyone had a loving mother or a safe environment. Or the person they loved didn’t have a ‘good death’ and they’re angry or traumatised by that experience. Try not to put your own experiences onto others.
8. Have your own boundaries
If you feel as though someone is leaning on you too heavily then it’s ok to say ‘I’ll be thinking of you, but I have a lot going on this week in my family. How about we arrange Joseph to drop in/call/text/do that thing?’ You are allowed to have your own life, and you don’t have to make a big drama out of lightening your own load.
9. Research counsellors for the person if things seem to be deeply, painfully stuck and it’s ongoing
Or even if they aren’t. Grief-stricken folks can easily be taken advantage of by such shysters as fake psychics, and counselling can help enormously. There are good professionals out there. You don’t have to support someone all on your own. If they don’t want professional help, then that’s when boundaries come in again. You cannot and should not have to be everything to anyone. Give yourself permission to take a step back.
…
When someone you love loses someone they love, what is most required of you is to be present with them and not expect them to be anywhere or anyone else.
It’s scary but it’s actually not that hard. It doesn’t cost any money, it doesn’t mean you have to know ‘what to say’, you are not required to fix it or make them feel better.
It’s just you, being a person, sitting with another person who is going through something we all go through. Every single one of us.
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Main image by Külli Kittus on Unsplash
Thank you for this. All of these things are so true, and then so hard sometimes. I’m a counselor too, so I “know” these things, but man is it harder when life (or death) comes full force unexpectedly. It’s not the same as sitting with a client.
For me, it was my loss too, but not in the same way or to the same extent as it was for my other people. I felt guilty for having needs when obviously other people had it worse than me. Finding that balance, feeling my own grief and also being the one that supports vs. getting supported is the hardest. Or maybe it was the fact that multiple people that I love were profoundly affected by the same death. It was like no one was “not” grieving. Accepting that not everyone grieves the same was pretty rough at first too. That gets really highlighted when you are watching it happen all around you at different paces and with different perspectives. It all makes so much sense looking back, but in the moment I couldn’t make it make sense.
Hi Deidre.
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. You’re saying some things here that I’d like to honour further. One is about taking care of yourself when everyone is grieving in some way. The other is about how people grieve differently, which can be incredibly confronting. The latter is another whole blog post on it’s own- too many relationships have ended due to misunderstandings and hurts that arise from needing different things in grief. The former is maybe point ’10’ on the list: The importance of finding others/another to lean on when the grief is yours too, but not in the same way. Others to share with and ‘dump out’ to so as not to burden the primary ‘circle’.
Of course, in ‘real life’ dealing with a death is so very wild as you’ve highlighted. It’s human and raw and confusing and painful and life-changing. Not being able to ‘make sense’ of things in the moment is perfectly natural and yet we can be so hard on ourselves (and occasionally others) when we’re in a mess. I wonder what it might be like if we could all take a step back from the norms/pressures of society and be HUMAN a little bit more often, what might become clearer or more available to us all. X