How To Give Bereavement Messages And Find Words Of Condolence

Grief brings out strong feelings in everyone. Fragility and anger mix. Some are more prone to be distressed, others angry and aggressive, others bewildered. Everyone is different, though there is always one constant. Grief brings out a myriad of usually careful hidden emotions in everyone. Sending bereavement messages and giving supporting words of condolence can be helpful.

The Importance of Just Being There

Calling on someone or phoning or making contact in some way with someone who has had a death in the family is often a helpful thing to do. It reminds them that they are still loved by others and it is important that while their own emotions are all over the place, other people are keeping them in their mind. It brings its own form of stability; being remembered. BUT don’t stay too long, or expect a response.

Being available without smothering is important. Someone bereaved needs support but also needs space. It is a difficult balance but worth some thought about what the bereaved person can cope with. Look after them, weep with them, go out with them, but make no demands. If they do not want weeping with or going out with, respect their wishes. Some cultures have very clear guidelines on visiting families who are bereaved, which is often helpful for those responding to a bereavement, but if your culture is less clear, then you need to bring to bear your own personal wisdom and knowledge of the person and their likely needs. How much can one exhausted person bear at a time is a good question to ask yourself.

Avoid Saying: “Death is nothing at all”

This is a famous quotation by Scott Holland has become much used, but it is obviously not true and can often bring a response of anger. Who are you to suggest that it is nothing at all? A bereaved person may not be able to distinguish between your own fear about what to say and trying with good intent, but perhaps a little ineptly, to find something and a sense that your thoughts are dismissive of their reality. Death at this moment is everything.

Acknowledgement that you cannot take away the pain, acknowledgement that you can’t bring happiness but certainty that you are there if needed is probably the most helpful thing.

The Feeling of Being Needed

Sometimes the desire to be needed, particularly if we are the child or parent of someone bereaved, can be overwhelming. It is hugely important to people to know that people are there for them if they need it. The consistency, the genuine open door should the bereaved person be overwhelmed by their own grief and need emotional or other support is vital. It is often key to recovery.

However what many people don’t realise is that often the knowledge that someone is there is enough. Knowing that someone is there often means you don’t actually need to ask them for anything more. If no one is there, then the grief can grow. The sense that you are alone or the belief that you cannot cope anymore can reach overwhelming proportions. However the knowledge that someone is there often means a bereaved person does not fall hopelessly into distressed loneliness, but copes well even though they never actually ask for the help on offer.

A genuine offer to be there is often enough in itself. Try not to demand that the person takes up your offer. Sometimes a demand to be helpful is detrimental.

Faith and Death

It may be a supportive and comforting thought that they are with God, but most bereaved people don’t want the one they love to be with God. They want them to be beside them alive and on Earth.

Faith may well give a framework in which to think about death, but it does not diminish the sting of death or the fear of the separation or pain of loneliness.

“I Know How You Feel”

Even if you have lost someone close it is very very hard to believe in the depth of grief that someone else knows how you feel. And the truth is they probably don’t exactly. It is a phrase that can trip off the tongue all too easily as you try to identify to bring you closer to the bereaved person, but it is most likely to get the justifiable response of “no you don’t”.

“How Are You Doing?”

Badly is almost certainly the answer, but very few people want to say that. However, saying “Very well, thank you” seems hollow and blatantly dismissive of your own state of being if you are bereaved. This can be a dangerous question which feels like a no win trap to answer. The answer is almost certainly long, complex slightly out of reach for a bereaved person. Best to give this a miss.

Be open

Being open to listening is best.

Ask: “How did you meet your wife?”

Ask: “Did you have a favourite place with your father?”

But only ask if you want to listen.

If the bereaved person shuts you out, don’t push them to talk. They will talk if they want and not if they don’t. Open the door but don’t force anyone to walk through it.

Tread carefully, know within yourself that you cannot take away all the pain but you can be there if needed.

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The 5 Steps of Grief – Simplified for Those in Mourning

The 5 steps of grief or stages of grief comes from a famous model named after Dr Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, as her book “On death and dying” in 1969 opened doors to far more sensitive treatment to individuals with fatal diseases. She defined the following mourning stages:

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

It is a helpful model to use when thinking in the abstract about the process of mourning, but if you are in the midst of it then it is far more likely to feel like a messy and emotionally exhausting process with two steps forward and one step back rather than anything with clean edges and defined stages. However it can help to look back and see how far you have come from the first traumatic realisation that the person you love is not there anymore.

To try and help with the more messy side but accept that some understanding of different stages does exist here are some pointers to ways to help yourself move away from the traumatic state where the world seems almost pointless.

Acceptance in your head.

If you cannot find a way to build the story of the time leading up to the death and death itself, you may only have the traumatic experience at a gut level. You may well then remain in a childlike state where you cannot relax and you assume the death of another person you love is just around the corner. This post traumatic state of being can then continue and the actual event of the death can leave you stuck in that moment itself, reliving it, without your head accepting that it is over and you cannot change what happened.

By thinking through the events and characters within the timeframe you choose, you can put together the story of the last few weeks or days.

Everyone experiences a moment or time of trauma around a death, whether brief or very severe. This moment might be the death itself (if very sudden) or the ‘phone’ call. For many it is a period of time leading up to the death, weeks or hours. It may be the time of decline and slipping into frailty of the one you love; it could be the ambulance drive, the warning conversation with a doctor or even the distress of another close to the person who is dying.

The story helps you move into a period of mourning rather than staying like a rabbit in headlights, stuck in the moment of trauma. Mourning is an important stage to reach. Tell the story of the time before and the time of the death of the one you love.

Acceptance in your heart.

Anniversaries, birthdays, family time festivals can be very poignant, especially in the first year. It can feel important to sidestep the pain of reminders and to live in a sort of denial, a void where you cannot go some places, get up on some days. However when you feel strong enough, start to go places that were jointly important to you and the one who has died and acknowledging anniversaries small and big. Each time can bring you a little resolution in your heart. Talking with others about their memories on these anniversaries may seem just too hard, but ultimately it is these shared moments of letting others know how important the things you miss are and hearing others memories that can help with acceptance in your heart.

Sometimes people who love you find your grief very difficult to see and want you to avoid things that mean they might have to watch you in distress. Sometimes people want this new mourning every time an expected memory touches you to go away quickly. However, it will take the time it takes. You can help yourself though by not avoiding this part of mourning; be brave and encourage others to be courageous with you. In the long run everybody’s distress feel a little less raw and the capacity to share good memories will be increase enormously.

These two things are key steps to feeling less fragile in yourself:

1. Finding acceptance in your head of the reality and moving away from the traumatic moment into the journey of mourning and

2. Gently discovering acceptance in your heart along the journey of grief.