To find the use of 'passed' instead of died irritating?

I remember the term 'passed away' years ago when I was young. Passing seems to be a term Americans use. I work on an American facility and hear this word used a lot. I tend to say their soul has flown as I am spiritual but not religious.

Interesting isn't it......when I did a stint in the NHS they would refer to died as R.I.P.
In the police we used the number of the form we used....but to be fair we didn't always know if the died or were killed. !!

Euphemisms can be very misleading. A friend was told by the nurse who was on duty the night that her husband died, "John has left his overcoat behind". I am not certain how I would have reacted to that one.

When I worked in a care home one morning we couldn’t wake a 99 year old resident. The local doctor was called, arrived, mentioned that he’d stopped to have his breakfast, and was shown into the resident’s room.
I’d been sitting at her bedside and told him she had a weak pulse and still hadn’t awakened. He was shocked and apologetic for having had breakfast. He’d assumed that the person who phoned for him had said that we couldn’t wake her but meant that she had died.
Happily she lived for over a year more and enjoyed her hundredth birthday!

I have used “died” and “passed away” to describe the loss of 2 people I loved very much. It depends who I am talking to and what I am saying really.

I think that if you are using the term about your own loss, what you say is entirely up to you.
To somebody else I would err on the side of euphemism and mine of choice is “lost”
I speak of “losing” my DH last year and in a card or letter I would write “I am so sorry you have lost X”
And actually I do think of DH “passing away - he slipped so silently and peacefully we did not realise for a few seconds that his heart had stopped.
But each to their own. However it is paramount to respect the feelings of the bereaved.

No I think people use the words they are comfortable with and I don't get why it bothers anyone else either but each to their own.

Yes it irritates me no end. In fact my son sent me an email and he used passed away rather than dead. I replied: no one passes away to anywhere, they die and it's final.

I prefer saying "passed" or "passed away". "Died" seems so harsh. Passed, to me, means passing to the other side, because I do believe in an afterlife.

Much better than the phrase "kicked the bucket", which I heard many times when I was a child?

Thanks for that link grannyA, there are so few opportunities that allow us to talk about death openly and I do think we are the poorer for it. We’re all different and grieve in the way that seems best to each of us and so much of that is due to what we’ve seen/experienced as we grew up. In my book anything that helps us manage bereavement in our own lives or the lives of those we know can only be a positive thing.

A bit of levity about euphemisms. I worked with a child once, his family were naturists, but for an otherwise uninhibited family it seems they were coy about bodily functions. Instead of teaching the child to ask to go to the toilet /have a poo he announced he needed 'to think'. That's OK, I said, Just sit there quietly and have a think !

Agreed, annsixty. It’s particularly important not to use euphemisms with young children, who could be confused by them.

I guess it's personal preference. Instinctively, I tend to use the word "died" but I have a couple of friends who I know say "passed away" so, when people dear to them have died, I have used the phrase "passed away".

Language changes through the years.

Poor annsixty's mother. It must have been awful at the time for her but I can see how the mistake arose.

Died for me , it says it all.
Many years ago we had a neighbour who we all knew was very ill, she would have been in her 40's. Early one morning my mother saw her H walking by. She went out and asked" how is Doris?"
He pointed to the sky and said, "she has gone upstairs"
My mother carried on the conversation thinking she had taken to her bed.
No, she had died, my mother was so distressed, humiliated and embarrassed,
Euphemism can be misleading and very upsetting.

My lovely Salvation Army friend talks of her husband as "gone to glory" which I think is lovely. I tend to say 'died' and have noticed the American (?) 'passed' misplacing the more common 'passed away.'

It's a sensitive subject but dead is dead and I can handle the word. I appreciate others can't, or prefer to use others.

I think so too, missadventure. That idea has somewhat reconciled me to the use of "passed away".

Thank you for the Guardian link grannyactivist. Very informative and if there was one locally I'd really be keen to go and I don't think it's at all morbid. We shall all pass away, die or get our "Angel wings" sometime. I do think it's a subject many find difficulty in discussing with their families Annie.

So passed away literally means that a person has stepped away..
That's a nice thought.

I prefer 'died' to 'passed' or 'passed away'. I feel there is something more succinct and exact about 'died'.

However, I suppose the word 'pass' comes from the Latin word for a step. You could regard death as a step into the unknown, or the known for those with faith in an afterlife.

Thank you Grannyactivist , such a pity these people can’t discuss this with their families

My local paper had a headline a couple of weeks ago about someone "getting their angel wings".

It may even have been Mexico, my memory isn't as good as I'd like, so I just fill in the bits I can't remember with a guess word.

I recently read of a survey someone had done which showed that most people whose death was advertised in The Times were described as having died, while in The Daily Telegraph they had passed away.

I'm with The Times on this.

That is an interesting custom. It sounds as if it has parallels with the Day of the Dead festival in Mexico.

It was fascinating viewing..
Its all just so alien to us.