Sympathy, Empathy and Saying I'm Sorry

In the past month, two of my friends have lost loved ones. The first, lost his wife and the second her sister. Grief is a horrible process we all must endure in our lives. Some more than others. However, there is one crucial thing to remember; everyone mourns differently.

I'm Sorry for Your Loss.

It is possibly the first thing we say to someone in some form when a loved one passes. It is also one of the easiest, emptiest and most accepted forms of sympathy. We say it by rote. Whether we feel it wholeheartedly or out of manners, it is universal in the Western world to express our sympathies at the death of someone.

There are protocols on what you should and should not say.

This depends on the individual person and your relationship with them. If you are casual friends, extending your sympathies is usually enough. Shops are full of cards for this exact reason.

Sometimes, it is too difficult to express the feelings of sorrow personally, and some may find it easier to send a sympathy card. In the era I grew up in, it was expected to send a card no matter what.

In today's world, things are a little more complicated. With the internet, communication is easier than ever. This also makes us a little more callous. For example, we may say something from the safety of a text or message that we would never say to someone's face. It is often not intentional, but it is hard to emote through a screen, and someone can take words differently than they were meant.

Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash

I Know How You Feel

I want to throat-punch people who say this. It is harsh, but it's true. Every time I hear this said to someone mourning a loved one, I want to choose violence.

No one knows how another person feels at the loss of a loved one. Their experiences are not the same as yours. They do not need your validation or camaraderie in their grief. Too many times, I've seen people wince and nod their heads, thanking the person for their thoughts and appreciating their sentiments.

It may be a trigger for me, but when my son died, I wanted to crawl into the ground with him. Having well-meaning men and women explain to me they knew how I felt and tell me how I should react enraged me. I felt like screaming; you do not know how I feel. That's not your child going into the ground.

However, talking to other parents who had been through it and sharing the grief is a whole other story. A man I worked with lost his son to stillbirth. It was in a time when stillborn babies did not have funerals or even graves. They knew someone who had died, and the family let them bury the baby with that friend.

It sounds horrifying, but it was the way of things. They were grateful they had buried their child at all instead of being tossed into the incinerator at the hospital. Not once did my friend tell me he knew how I felt. What he did was to share his own grief and loss with me, to let me know I was not alone. That meant more than any other utterances of sympathy I received.

The funny thing, other parents came forward and talked to me about their losses. How they had lost children and how they felt. None of them said I know how you feel. It was also a subject that no one talked about. I had no clue that most of them had lost children, let alone how much it affected them.

So, protocol is important in expressing your sympathy. Honestly, I suck at it, and I tell my friends and family that before I offer condolences. It usually goes like this:

“I am so sorry for your loss. I suck at expressing sympathy, and I will stick my foot in my mouth, and I apologise in advance for any brain-to-mouth malfunction.”

Photo by Matt Sings on Unsplash

Dark Humour

This one has to be with the right people. It's also my go-to for those I'm close with. Sometimes, people deal with grief by laughing and joking about the death or life of their loved one.

There is nothing wrong with this. It is a coping mechanism and is normal. We all grieve in different ways. For example, when my grandma died, I recounted how she and Grandpa used to call each other names. He would call her an ‘old bitch. And she would call him’ an old bastard’.

I thought it was hilarious and something I remember fondly from my childhood. They said it with love and were amazing people. But, I had relatives that were horrified that I said something so crass. It was not something that should have been said. My grandma was a fierce but loving woman. She was an amazing mother and grandmother and an all-around great human being. A lot of families had her on a pedestal, but that was something that I remembered so clearly and shared. The more conservative family members did not receive it well.

Overall, there is no right or wrong way to grieve a love one, even though there is a right and wrong way to express sympathy. I know I have messed up more than my fair share when expressing mine! My best advice it to be genuine, be there if needed and not to push.

Unless that is the type of relationship you have with the individual. No two people are the same, and everyone's needs are different.