six minutes
What to say, when you do not know what to say
Most people say nothing because they are afraid of saying the wrong thing, and the nothing is worse than almost any wrong thing would have been.
Reading
Everything we have written
Three pieces, and all three of them are about what happens after the funeral rather than before it.
There is not much here, and there is a reason for that. A funeral home with forty articles on its website has usually written them for a search engine rather than for a person, and it shows in the first paragraph.
These three exist because the same conversations happen at the door on the way out, months after everybody else has gone home. What do I say to her. Is it normal that the fourth month is worse than the first. Do we take the children. Nobody writes any of that down for the people who ask, and the callers stop ringing at about the point where it gets difficult.
None of it is counselling and none of it is medical advice. It is the ordinary shape of the thing, written out, so that the hardest part is not also a surprise.
The three pieces
Written for whoever needs them — the first one is for the friend rather than for the bereaved person.
eight minutes
The first year, roughly in order
Not a set of stages and not a schedule. Just the shape of it, from families who have been through it, so that the worst part does not also arrive as a surprise.
seven minutes
Talking to children about a death
Children ask the questions adults have decided not to ask, and they cope considerably better with a plain answer than with a gentle one that turns out to be untrue.
What we do afterwards, and what we do not
Reading is not the only thing on offer, and it is worth being plain about the limit of the rest of it.
We ring at a month and again at a year, and we keep a list of what is available near here. None of it is counselling and we will not call it counselling.
There is a page about what help exists near here and how to tell which kind you want, and a telephone that is answered at any hour by somebody who is not a counsellor and will not pretend to be one.
If you would rather ask a person than read a page
The telephone is answered at every hour of every day. You do not have to be arranging anything to ring it, and nothing said on that call is a commitment.