Collection
When someone has died
Most people do something in the first week and nothing after that. The casseroles arrive, the cards arrive, the funeral happens, and then it goes quiet — which is usually the point at which the person is least able to cope and least likely to ask. Almost everything here is about being the one who turns up later.
None of it requires you to say the right thing. Several of these exist precisely because there is no right thing to say, and doing something concrete is what is left. If you are worried about making it worse by mentioning it: not mentioning it is the thing that hurts, in almost every account of grief anyone has written down.
10 things you can do
In roughly the order they tend to be needed.
In the first two days the job is telling everyone, over and over, to people who then need comforting. It is the worst task and the easiest one to take.
Offer to be the one who tells everyone
After a diagnosis or a death, repeating the news to each person in turn is its own exhausting job.
An afternoonFreeA friend
A death generates weeks of paperwork aimed at whoever is least able to face it. This is the single most useful thing on this page.
Offer to do the paperwork after a death
Bereavement comes with dozens of phone calls in which you explain, repeatedly, that someone has died.
An afternoonFreeA friend
People stop running their own house. Somebody has to notice the practical things nobody is doing.
Check whether the heating is actually on
Many older people ration heating in silence. Cold homes cause a large, measurable share of winter deaths.
Half an hourFreeA neighbor
Everyone avoids the subject to be kind, which leaves the bereaved person unable to talk about the only thing they are thinking about.
Ask about the person who died
Grieving people are usually far more afraid of their person being forgotten than of being reminded.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Using the name is the smallest possible version of the same thing, and it costs you nothing.
Use the dead person's name
People avoid the name to protect the grieving. The effect is that the person disappears from every conversation.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Someone held it together through the funeral and organized everyone else. Nobody has asked how they are.
Check on the one who held it together
At every funeral one person organizes everything. They are the last to be asked how they are, often by months.
5 minutesFreeA friend
The visits stop at roughly the point the reality starts. Being the one who keeps coming is rare.
Keep visiting the widow after the first year
Attention to a bereaved spouse drops sharply after twelve months, which is roughly when the reality lands.
OngoingFreeA neighbor
The honest way to keep going after the funeral is to not rely on remembering.
Diarise the six-month mark
After a death everyone appears for a fortnight and then vanishes. Month six is when the house is quietest.
5 minutesFreeA friend
The first anniversary is brutal and almost nobody outside the family marks it. A message that day means more than anything sent in week one.
Remember the date everyone else forgot
The anniversary of a death or a miscarriage is carried privately by one or two people and acknowledged by nobody.
5 minutesFreeA friend
Grief involves a lot of small events with thin attendance. Being there is the whole contribution.
Go to the small thing nobody else will
The exhibition, the first gig, the talk to nine people. Attendance at the small things is what people remember.
An afternoonUnder $10A friend