What To Say (And Do) To Grieving People

 This is Part 2 of Grieving People, for Part 1:  https://deepheavystuff.blogspot.com/2022/01/what-not-to-say-to-grieving-people.html

In the last post, we looked at what not to say to someone who’s grieving due to a death of a close loved one. But you do need to say something, so here’s what you should say.  

Why is this important? The grieving person is in extreme emotional pain and needs to be treated with gentleness and kindness. So, no matter what, communication needs to be gentle and compassionate.

Imagine you are talking to someone lying in a hospital bed with third-degree burns. They are entirely bandaged up and looking at you through a space in the gauze. The grieving person is in as much internal agony as the physical pain of this patient. Treat them accordingly.

Rule #1 - When speaking with a grieving person:

Do not say a lot. Let your words be few.

For emphasis:

DO NOT SAY A LOT. LET YOUR WORDS BE FEW.

The more you talk, the more likely you are to drift into the things not to say category.

Think before you speak and keep your words at a minimum. No more than eight words at a time are needed. And this goes for follow-up statements. Every statement you make should be concise and to the point.

The reason you do not need many words, to paraphrase Woody Allen, 80% of your caring is just showing up. It’s your presence that’s important, not your words. You are being there for them, that’s enough.

Rule #2 – It is not your responsibility or purpose to make the grieving person feel better with your words.

This rule is difficult for us positive and compassionate types to follow. As my good friend Lynn points out, in response to the previous post, “there isn't a d@mn thing that will make a grieving person feel better.”

And in trying to lift the person’s spirits, you risk the unintended outcomes detailed in the previous post. At that moment, the grieving person is not supposed to feel better; they are just supposed to grieve. And grieving involves pain. So, even though you are tempted to say positive things, No! Just no.

Rule #3 – Be kind, compassionate, and somber.

Yes, this is common sense. But sometimes, common sense isn’t as common as you think, and it’s always best to have three rules.

Practical Examples

The best thing to say, according to Theresa, and people commenting on the previous post, is:

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

Five words, shows sorrow, communicates caring and empathy. Although not grammatically correct, you are not apologizing; it has become the shortened version of “I’m sorrowful for your loss”. You can raise the intensity with “I’m so sorry for your loss”.

Using even fewer words:

“My condolences.”

The word condolences is a substitute for the verb form of sympathy. Condolences are expressing feelings of sorrow for someone else’s loss or misfortune”. So, you are expressing sorrow for their loss. “My deepest condolences”, takes it up a notch. “My deepest sympathies” does work if you deem condolences too formal.

The Rest of the Conversation

After expressing your sorrow, let the other person speak. Respond by agreeing with what they said. Nod a lot. If appropriate, a hug or a hand on the shoulder helps convey that you care. But keep your words limited and on track: no advice, platitudes, or anything else from the previous post.

But You’re Not Done Yet

Theresa (who lost her daughter due to an aggressive cancer) emphasized that highly traumatized people need special care after the tragedy.

“There’s 200 people at the funeral – then nobody calls afterward,” she bemoaned.

Her advice:

-       Don’t ignore them.                                                                    

-       Don’t turn your back on them.

-       Knock on the door with flowers.

-       Invite them out for coffee or lunch.

-       Hug them when you see them.

If you are a close friend, you have a responsibility to help the person through the grieving process. This is difficult because as humans we attempt to avoid people who have suffered loss. We feel uncomfortable, awkward; we don’t know what to say.

I failed at this years ago with a co-worker who tragically lost his wife suddenly due to a rapidly invasive cancer. When he returned to work after several months, I knew I should say something but didn’t, because of the factors above. But that was wrong. I needed to say something. I needed to express condolences and never did. (I’m correcting that misdeed and sending him this post)

Coffee Talk

You can say more when you meet the person for coffee, lunch, or wherever down the road. But still don’t say any of the comments listed in the previous post. Let them talk, and you listen. They may spiritually bleed all over the table, and that’s okay. It’s part of the grieving process. But you are there, and that’s more important than anything.

Be kind, be compassionate (Theresa’s words). Do not tell them how to grieve because we all grieve differently and the length of time needed greatly varies. You can make positive statements at this time but they should be short and tailored to the individual person.

And you will have to initiate these meetings. The grieving person will not reach out because they hurt too much. This is on you. You will resist doing it, BUT IT MUST BE DONE. It is YOUR responsibility as a friend.

Two More Things

Don’t be afraid to say their name (the deceased). Theresa said this, and my good friend Vicki, who lost her adult daughter, commented in response to my previous post:

“What bothers me is when people grimace or move away when I mention her, and this can be friends and family.”

Also, both women emphasized that time does not heal this wound. It is so deep, that it never goes away. Therefore, treat these people with special care – always.

The End

This is the deepest, heaviest stuff there is. Now you know what to say, and what not to say to a grieving person. And if you are that grieving person, I hope you realize that people say stupid things under stress, and you extend grace to them. I wish you peace.

 

What Not To Say To Grieving People

The worst part of life is death. Not our own death; sometimes, we don’t even see our demise coming. Other times, we have ample time to prepare. But it’s dealing with the deaths of others which is so painful. When it is someone close to us, the agony is so potent, we give it a special name: grief.

Grief is one of the most complex elements of the human psyche. It impacts us in ways psychologists still cannot fully understand. This suffering is difficult to decipher because we all grieve differently. The timing, the intensity, the mixing of complex emotions, all varies. It’s difficult to describe and unpredictable.

I’ve wailed, not just cried, but wailed, one time in my entire life. I had just finished all the paperwork in the nursing facility where my mother died. As I walked down the hall past her old room for the last time, I felt this rage of emotion bubbling deep within me. I sped up my pace, through the lobby, out the door until I was trotting across the parking lot. I made it to my car, shut the door, and wailed. Wailed loud, wailed hard, wailed long.

And the most important thing I learned is that you must grieve. If you don’t properly grieve, it’s as if you swallow a poison pill, and the poison stays within you, inflicting all sorts of pain and creating problems in your life, but you don’t even realize this poison is in you and causing hidden damage. You must grieve to expel the poison out of your soul.

Therefore, grieving hurts terribly but must occur. And we often encounter friends and associates who have suffered a great loss, such as the unexpected death of a spouse or child. We know they are in pain, and we feel the need to comfort them. So, we search for something positive to say in this horribly, terrible time. 

But we are uncomfortable around grieving people. This puts us, and our brains, under an enormous amount of stress. We need to say something. But because of the pressure, we don’t search for the right thing to say, and we blurt out whatever thought pops into to our minds. We want to say something helpful and encouraging, but sometimes we say the wrong things. We don’t mean to, but our comments can actually be hurtful if we are not careful.  

The danger here, is the grieving person is trapped in a fiery circle of distress. They have just lost a spouse, a parent, a child, a best friend, a lover. They are not thinking clearly, they are not responding normally, they are not fully functioning, they are just hurting. Thus, be extremely careful what you say to them when they are in this vulnerable state.

This subject was already on my future blog list when I overheard my friend Theresa discussing this very issue with another friend at an event recently. Theresa lost her daughter several years ago to acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She shared her feelings with me during a lengthy discussion on the topic. She provided me with a few examples of the wrong thing to say  quoted off the top of her head because she has heard them so often:

Here are a few examples about what not to say:

“God doesn’t give you more than you can handle”

In the same vein –

“God must have thought you were strong enough to do this to you”

What’s wrong here:

You might be a person of faith, but right now, this grieving person has some severe issues, questions, and doubts about THE CREATOR. They are not very happy with God right now. The person doesn’t want, nor needs, to hear your pop theology at this moment. You are not a pastor or counselor, so steer clear of this road. Over time, the person will need to work this out, maybe with professional help, as part of the grieving process.

And similar to this, also avoid: Everything happens for a reason. Because in these cases – there is no good reason. So, no.

“She’s in a better place.”

and

“They are always with you.”

 What’s wrong here:

Even if the statements are factual in a sense, they provide little comfort to the person. The departed loved one is not physically here. The grieving person has suffered a loss, resulting in something being gone from their life. There is a vast void. These statements imply that the void doesn’t matter, when it is the most painful part of the ordeal.

“I know how you feel”

and

“Time will ease your pain”

and

“You can move on now”

What’s wrong here: Unless you have suffered something as traumatic as the person, you can’t possibly know how this person feels at that moment. If you have been traumatized this much, you probably already know not to communicate this thought in this way. But even if you have suffered something similar, the person’s grief will still be different, perhaps much more intense, than you experienced. The truth is, you don’t know how they feel. So, no.

The fact that time may ease the pain, and the person will eventually move on, offers no comfort in the present. It’s totally irrelevant to a person currently in intense pain.

The Results

The previous examples are not just random utterances; they are often spoken by well-meaning people. However, they do not provide comfort. Sometimes, they inflict more pain.

Theresa told me, “There were times after hearing the same statement for the umpteenth time, that I felt like punching the person in the face.”

My Purpose In Writing About This

The purpose of this essay is not to chastise you for making these statements. We have all said the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time. The reason to discuss this deep, heavy stuff is to help you in the future when you encounter someone in severe grief. Please remember to think before you speak, and not say the statements, or anything similar to it, previously discussed.

“But Don, you’ve told us what not to say. I hate articles that tell you what not to do, but don’t tell you what to do instead.” Well, so do I. And in Part 2, we will look at, based on Theresa’s experience, what we need to say to grieving people and what they need from us.

 

Acting Out Of Character

On my vacation in October, I read the book “YOU are a BADASS: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life” by Jan Sincero. I wasn’t really interested in becoming a bad@$$. I do frequently doubt myself, however. And claiming that I’m great? Well, uncomfortable – but lots more about that to follow.                                              

I selected this book because it is one of the most popular ones in the self-development/life-skills genre, somewhat similar to the content in Deep Heavy Stuff. This is research if I ever want to write a book containing deep, heavy stuff (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

“YOU are a BADASS” is a good read, and the author did convince me that anyone who has written three books is a bad@$$. But her most interesting concept was how your parents had a negative impact on some aspects of your character/personality. It’s not that your parents intentionally taught you bad behavior. But in teaching you what they believed was good behavior, they inadvertently taught you things that are holding you back and preventing you from becoming a bad@$$.

For example, let’s say you are a guy and your father taught you that a man should never ask anyone for help. The benefit is that you learned to be resourceful, independent, and hard-working. However, as an adult, you never ask for help, even when you desperately need it. You will even refuse help when offered, no matter your circumstances. These traits, both the good and the bad, became ingrained in you and became part of your character.

To become a true bad@$$, the author says you must identify these negative aspects and strive to overcome them. In other words, retain the positive parts of your personality and mitigate the negative ones. This is extremely difficult to do since it requires you to act, by definition, out of character.

As I pondered this concept on the beach, I concluded it was valid, and I already knew one thing my dad had instilled in me that was having a negative impact. Growing up, I was never allowed to brag about my accomplishments. Heck, it was forbidden to even talk about any successes.

This was the result of my father’s Pennsylvania Dutch heritage. The Pennsylvania Dutch are humble people. They are like Amish, only not afraid of modern life. Like the Mennonites but not as religious, and they dress better. I doubt there has ever been a famous Pennsylvania Dutch person because they would have had to do something that garnered them fame – and that would be not easy to deal with. Really awkward for the tribe.

My father’s teaching meant that I would not grow up to be arrogant, proud, boastful, haughty, etc. And I would not think of myself as better than anyone. The Pennsylvania Dutch are great people, and I love this part of my heritage. However, if a person has written three books, then it might be a hindrance if the author is reluctant to express positive thoughts regarding his writings.

So, right there on the beach, I decided I would post positive, bragging comments about my current book, “Turkey Terror At My Door!” on Facebook, once a day, the entire month of November. The thought of doing this caused me much anxiety, and I worried people would be offended, repulsed, and unfriend me on Facebook in droves.

Doing something “out of character” is extremely difficult to do. This is more than just stepping out of your comfort zone. Getting out of the comfort zone means doing stuff that makes you uncomfortable. Acting out of character is being different than who you actually are. And that creates tremendous, almost debilitating, anxiety.

Now, you may say, “Don, what’s the big deal with a little bragging?” That’s because it’s my hurdle, not yours. You have your own issues, buried inside your character, put there by your parents, that are totally different from mine. It would cause just as much anxiety for you if you tried to face it.

As November approached, my anxiety grew. I had severe doubts about doing this. I looked for reasons not to go through with it. I was so apprehensive, I asked my friend Janet what she thought about it, essentially asking for permission. She said I should definitely do the posts and then added, “But you won’t be able to come up with thirty things to brag about.”

Well if you want to motivate me, just tell me I can’t do something that I know I have the capability to accomplish. I decided this project was a “go”.

Still, on the morning of November 1, I sat there, for minutes, staring at the computer screen with the first post typed into the comment box. The internal conflict was intense. Doing something out of character is so psychologically disturbing. It shakes you to your core, and as I reached for the mouse, my hand was trembling. And then click, and this was posted:

Brag #1 - On vacation, I read the book, You Are a Badass. The author suggests doing stuff “out of character” because some things your parents taught you are holding you back. So, for a month, I’m going to brag, yes brag, about my book – my father would so much not approve. And, oh, yeah, Turkey Terror At My Door! is a tremendous book and you should read it.

On November 2, I followed up with this:

Brag #2 – When I released “Just Make Me A Sammich” in 2015, I didn’t think I could write any better than that! I laugh at myself now, because the writing in “Turkey Terror At My Door!” is so much better. And the good news is: I know I can still raise my game. Sammich is hilarious – but read the Turkey book!

And I posted my “brags” every day in November, concluding with:

Brag #30 – When I discussed my plan for bragging about Turkey Terror At My Door! every day in November with my good friend Janet she said “ Go for it! But surely you can’t come up with 30 things about the book to brag about.” Even my friends underestimate my creative capabilities. (Keyboard drop). This concludes the “bragging project”. #badassauthor #readthebook.

The anxiety diminished each day. In the beginning, I was so distressed about how people might react that I considered checking my Facebook friend count daily to see how many people were jumping ship. At some point, I realized if people rejected me for my self-promotion, they were never on my team to begin with. And if this is the case, then get your sorry-@$$ off the train because you are slowing me down. 

I’m not sure completing this project makes me a bad@$$, although the book's author would indeed say so. I don’t think I sold any more books directly from the bragging posts, but that was never the purpose. However, at a craft fair in late November, I sold more books than I had at any event ever. Could it be that I was exuding more confidence and, dare I say it, pride in my books? If so, those people were dealing with a true bad@$$.

 

  

 

 

 

Raise Your Game This Year

The year 2021 has been a brutal one for many people. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. After surviving the plague of our age in 2020, we hoped 2021 would be a great year. That we would be able to live and love fully again. That the surge in deaths would cease. That we would return to those good times, the ones we never realized were that good, and the normal, which we craved so much, would return.

We are hopeful creatures. Hope is a great thing. It keeps us moving forward when we don’t have the strength to go. It helps us maintain sanity when our moods are dire. It is the light at the end of our personal darkness. But we never were able to get there in 2021. And while hope makes us feel wonderful, hopes that get crushed cause more distress. The plague just hung on, killing hundreds of thousands more - generating fear, sadness, grief, and frustration into us all at once.

2021 may have been better for some people, but it brought tremendous sorrow for others. My friend Harry described his year in terms of all the people in his life that were gone, some from the plague, some from other things. The natural deaths that occurred were added on to the plague fatalities, to create one giant pile of death. I can count my losses also: Graham, Dana, Mark, Richard, and finally, the plague has taken away my dear friend Kora, the day after Christmas. Yes, death happens. It must happen. But none of these people, none, are older than me. And then there’s the close relative recently diagnosed with a terrible, terminal condition.

Two years living with the plague has put people under an incredible amount of stress. Add any additional pressure on top of it, and bad things happen - the riots, the murders, the crime, the robberies, the arguments, the fights, etc.

Personally, your mood and outlook have been negatively impacted by the dark clouds of the last two years. You are not treating other people as well as you could. You are not thinking as clearly. You are moody and prone to fits of anger. You have lowered your expectations. You have put your dreams and plans on hold. This change began slowly and would have quickly disappeared if the plague had been brief. But after two years, there is a danger these negative traits have burrowed into your soul.

As we enter the new year, sometime soon, it will be time to live again. It will be time to put away the sorrows and struggles of the past and embrace the future. 2022 is a breakthrough year and ….

IT’S TIME TO: RAISE YOUR GAME                        

It’s time to treat others better than they deserve. People have been hurting so much. They are moody, angry, rude, argumentative, etc. Realize that, and strive to be better in your words and deeds. Imagine you are a nurse walking through a ward of sick people. Deliver the mercy and compassion that people need. It’s time to bring the best “you” to the table – and to your world. 

RAISE YOUR GAME

Help others when you see they need help. Be the best person you can be, because the world has changed, and not for the better. Raise your game and be a better person than you were before the plague. If you don’t, you risk hold on to all the negatively weighing you down. Be your best person ever this year because people need it.

RAISE YOUR GAME

For two years we have complained about our conditions. “If it weren’t for the plague, I could have achieved this.” “Things would have gone much better, except …..”. The plague has weighed us down. The plague has frozen us in time. When things break open, there is a risk that we will remain cold and be hesitant to move forward. But we must run hot. We must break loose this year. Understand that our efforts in 2020 and 2021 are insufficient for 2022. You have been held down for two years. Now Go! Go fly. Go achieved. Go flourish. It’s time to ….

RAISE YOUR GAME

Make 2022 one of the best years of your life, after trudging through two awful, terrible years.

RAISE YOUR GAME