What Do I Say?
by A helpful guide to encounters with tragedy and grief in the lives of friends and loved ones. It’s always difficult to know what to say "at a time like this" and it’s almost always important to be able to find out. This guide suggests appropriate and helpful things to say as well as when it’s best not to say anything at all.
“What do I say?” is a huge question when confronted with the tragedies which occur in the lives of your friends and family. How many times have you asked yourself what you can possibly say when your best friend’s mother has died suddenly and unexpectedly and your friend is on the phone describing to you the moment when she found her mother lying in the kitchen floor, ashen-faced and not breathing. You listen in shock, knowing that in a minute she’ll expect you to respond and all you can think of is “what do you say in a moment like this?”
This is one of the scariest moments of life – right up there with getting up in front of a room full of people to speak – and somehow our brains shut down, our mouths get as dry as the Sahara Desert, and we suddenly feel like a 2nd grader who has to read the really dumb poem written about the teacher in front of her and the whole class.
So what do you say in a moment like this? You are faced with a friend who has suffered an unspeakable loss and you think that this requires you to speak. Even though it’s one of the most difficult times to say anything, we think that the bereaved still want, expect, and need for us to say something comforting, meaningful, and profound. Nine times out of ten we fail. Why? Because humans just don’t know how to talk about death.
Have Never Been There
Mostly that’s because, let’s face it, we have never been there. None of us has actually died so how would anyone know what it’s like. Without knowing what it’s like, we don’t have any experience to inform us as we try to speak intelligently to one who has lost a loved one. But, wait a minute!! We don’t have to know what it’s like to die – we only have to know what it’s like to suffer a loss. If you have not suffered the loss of a loved one, then you’ll be at a slight disadvantage, but we all have experienced loss of some kind.
Think about your life and think about what you have lost (we’re not talking about car keys or eyeglasses), things like:
- A pet
- A job
- A friend who fought with you and won’t speak to you now
- A neighbor who moved away
- A house – from foreclosure or just selling it and moving away
- A community because of moving away
- The ability to work
- The ability to walk
- The ability to drive
- Your car
Of course, there are many other little things but all the big things you have lost can give you some inkling of what your friend feels like when she calls to tell you that her mother has died.
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