Use the dead person's name
People avoid the name to protect the grieving. The effect is that the person disappears from every conversation.
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Why it lands
The fear is that saying the name will remind them, as though they had briefly forgotten. They have not — it is the only thing they are thinking about. What the avoidance actually communicates is that the person has become unmentionable, which is a second loss layered onto the first. Almost every bereaved person reports the same thing: they wanted to hear the name and nobody would say it.
How
Use it naturally rather than solemnly. “Michael would have found this ridiculous” is better than any careful euphemism. Telling a story they have not heard is the best version — you are giving them a piece of the person they did not have.
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