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Partners
We’ve all read those articles that profess to know what to say and what not to say to the bereaved. Pitched as advice pieces, you’re given to believe that after reading them you’ll be an expert on how to support someone who has lost a loved one.
Recent experience, however, has taught me that these articles are only vaguely accurate and in truth, nothing anyone says in a time of bereavement is the “right” thing.
My sister and my dad died within nine months of each other. Belinda died in May last year, and my dad has been gone for almost a month.
I feel utterly bewildered by this course of events. They were both gravely ill. We knew what was coming. But to lose two people I loved so very much in such a short space of time has been nothing short of breath taking.
It was just after my dad died that I realised that regardless of how careful people are, it’s almost impossible not to offend someone who has lost a loved one.
It was a simple question a day after my dad died, and a few people asked it: “When is the funeral?” Seems inoffensive enough, right? Wrong.
That simple sentence sent me into a rage so wild it scared my husband. It felt like I’d just finished organising my sister’s funeral which was a dreadful affair: the funeral home was dire and too small for all the friends and family who wanted to pay their respects, the pastor’s so-called non-religious message offensive, and the day just all-in-all wrong. I didn’t feel like I’d honoured the enormous personality she was. I felt like I’d failed her.
I was just putting that behind me and now here were these people asking me to arrange another funeral, this time for my dad. How dare they expect this of me? I wouldn’t to do it. No one could make me. I was going to shut my phone off, close the curtains and climb into bed until everyone with their unreasonable and thoughtless demands just went away.
It was an aunt who rescued me. I blubbered over the phone to her about how lost I felt and she arrived like the angel she is to help with the finances and ensure that everything was in place.
Nothing about that question was offensive. I know that now. It was the mental space I was in and what had brought me to that place that caused my tantrum. But what that experience taught me is that no matter how meticulous you are at following advice about what to say and what not to say to the bereaved, no matter how much you read up on how to comfort them, sometimes, through no fault of your own, anything you say will just be wrong.
