Bereavement is discovering who your true friends are!

I think it's probably people who have never had a bereavement who don't know what to say. If you have been through it, you know that any offer of help or sympathy is welcome and you certainly don't want to be avoided. I am fortunate to have many widowed friends who were a great support when I lost my husband a year ago.

I had a similar experience to Greebfran -my best friend and I were pregnant together. I had a heamthy child and hers was still born. I didnt know what to do as visiting bringing my baby seemed a crass thing to do so in the end i wrote a note and said how sorry i was and put it through her door. She came round to visit me a few days later and I kept my baby out of sight and tried not to refer to him much. We remained friends.

dragonfly45 I'm so sorry that you have lost your dad and I can quite understand why you were upset by this lady's response.

I think whether a person is religious or not probably doesn't have an awful lot to do with how kind and thoughtful they are. A lady who has been a good friend to my mum is a catholic and visits my mum regularly and sometimes takes her out. She is such a nice person. Another religious friend can't resist the opportunity of delivering a sermon to a captive audience when she visits mum.

Some religious people are lovely, some are not. Some atheists/agnostics are lovely, some are not. I do agree, though, that those who loudly profess to be Christian really should try and live up to that description.

Your neighbour is also recently bereaved perhaps she couldn't deal with your loss soon after her own . My condolences .

I don't think Shysal, a shy young teenager at the time, could have been expected to know what to say to the widow of a man who met with a tragic end on the railway line.

Yes, I have noticed people find it hard to know what to say. I usually send a letter or a card and, when I see the bereaved person, I just say "How nice to see you. I really was sorry". The bereaved person replies with "thank you" and proceeds to talk either about the death or other things.

Oh the kindness of strangers. You certainly know who your true friends are after a bereavement. When our young beloved grandson died after a long severe illness, we found a void of support from "friends" we had known for many years. Perhaps they couldn't find the words but showing some empathy wouldn't have gone amiss. Such difficult times but happy memories are always there to brighten our days.

When my mother died a long time ago her death was in the local paper and I contacted everyone I could think of. Then I received a telephone call from someone my mother had known since I started school, they had got to know each other at the school gate and met up from time to time. She was absolutely furious that I hadn't let her know, said how hurt she was, how she had known my mother for 20+ years. Not one word of sympathy. I can't remember now if she came to the funeral. Perhaps she hadn't found out in time. Not informing her was a complete oversight on my part although to be honest I didn't see her as a bosom friend of my mother.

I have been very lucky in my friends since my DH died two years ago. I have had, and still get, lots of support. I do know from other bereaved people that some people appear very unsympathetic. I do think, though, that some of that is because they do not know what to say. Also, they may have had a bereavement themselves and cannot cope with someone else’s emotions.

I agree with most of tgexsentiments aboove and I do try to apeak to bereaved people appropriately although I find it very difficult. But I once had my head bitten off when I tried to offer sympathy!
When my mother dies unexpectantly (we were very close) a 'friend' asked me the following week if I had got over it yet! I was lost for words and mumbled not really or something!

Many years ago a neighbour's baby girl was stillborn. I was pregnant at the time, and had a daughter shortly afterwards.
I'm ashamed to say that I did everything I could to avoid her, because the thought of that poor dead baby, when I had a live healthy one, just sent me into floods of tears. I almost felt ashamed of my child, and didn't want her to have the distress of seeing me with my baby, but basically I just didn't know how to deal with the situation.
Eventually we began to speak to each other, and I apologised and explained my behaviour. We are now good friends. She ended up with 5 sons. Sadly one of them committed suicide last year. I made sure, this time around, that I was there for her.

An officious woman where I used to work asked if I 'was grieving properly'!
Unbelievable. Yet another person who I would have thought to be extremely insensitive was the first person to come and speak to me when I got back to work and was so kind. I really appreciated it.

NanaRayna and bumblebee34....I too lost a baby and the crass comment " Well, you can always have another one" made me feel like a 3 year old girl who had lost her favourite doll.

So sorry for your loss?
When I was young , shortly after giving birth to identical twin girls, one of them sadly died. I did get one or two crass comments like “ never mind, at least you still have one” which I know in a way is true but just because you still have one thankfully healthy baby it does not at all compensate for the loss of the other. You form a relationship with both while in the womb. Also anything to with twins eg. Double sets of clothes and other paraphernalia had mysteriously been magicked away by well meaning relatives before my return home, so as ‘not to upset me’. It would have been far better to have let me deal with all that in my own time and let things go when I was ready to. They thought they were doing the right thing but sadly it wasn’t and I had repercussions of ‘complicated’ grief that affected me even many years down the line.

Christians also have faults. We never claim to be perfect.

My husband died on Boxing Day 2017 so still very raw but I found people wanted to keep a distance in case of saying something that may upset. I have never been a person to cry in front of others,even now if I need a cry I will go to the bathroom as very aware I still have one child still in school and one with autism and don’t want to upset them. Maybe your friend feels she doesn’t want to hurt you more,even though she may be good at speaking out etc when it comes to dealing with death it can make people quite different

A lot of people just do not know how to speak to someone who has just suffered a bereavement.

I taught religion at school for many years and told my older pupils that the only thing they must never do when hearing of a death is to ignore the family concerned.

That said if you don't know what to tell the person who has just lost a dear one that fact put into words will do, "I'm sorry, I really don't know what to say that will help"

The truth as we all know is that NOTHING helps in the first raw grief, but the fact that some -one cares enough to express sympathy however phrased warms one a little.
Well, perhaps not however phrased, the comment MawBroon suffered is decidedly out of place.
I'm sorry for your loss, and for your run in with a somewhat hypocritical member of the church I too belong to.

A perfectly pleasant woman I worked with told me after my mother died that she wasn’t expecting to still have a parent at my age (54!). I think she was trying to tell me to get over it.

NanaRayna - part of me wanted to send you love, but part of me did think about just clicking onto something else.
Lots of hugs Nana, what an awful thing to happen to you and your family x

First I am sending hugs - sorry to hear of your loss.
Secondly some people can't handle talking about death.
Thirdly some good friends of my parents were away when Dad died at Christmas. They never contacted my mother, ever. We never saw them again.

Dragonly, so sorry for your loss.

MawBroon that expresses it exactly. Everyone was kind, no-one avoided me, for which I am most grateful. Just get on with it, I tell myself. That's what my dear husband would have said.

When my husband died he had left instructions in his will that he wanted close family only at his funeral which was not s surprise to some of his friends as he was a very self-effacing person and didn't like fuss. Two sets of so called friends of over forty years have never spoken to me after I told them what were my husband's wishes, asked me to make an exception for them, but of course I could not. When do you know who are your real friends?

MawBroon that is so articulate. May we share it please? Would your friend mind?

When my baby son died at 21 weeks old, many years ago now, the most despicable thing people would say to me was, ' Well, you can always have another one'. They'd not have said that if it had been my husband, mother or other loved one. Such incredible ignorance and hurt, but undoubtedly kindly meant. I hated them for it.

df46 sorry for your current bereavement pain. Hopefully it will ease a little in due course. Thank goodness for happy memories. Just think you might be further helped by discerning practising Christians from nominal ones. It's a sad discovery but I've found it helpful in the thinning out process.

I once read "grief does not have a sell by date" so very true