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Facing Sorrow: How to Support a Grieving Friend
by Eileen Nicol

Like so many August days in San Francisco, this one was cool, breezy and sunny. My mother and I dressed my older sister Kate in a tracksuit and a warm hat to drive her across town to her oncologist. They knew her well there; after all, they’d been administering various chemotherapies to her for more than a year. Still, they seemed surprised by the stubborn wraith who forced herself up out of her wheelchair onto the scales, which revealed she’d lost seven pounds in the past week. She wasn’t strong enough to sit up on the table in the evaluation room. Yet when her doctor came in she said, “I need another treatment. What’s next?”

The doctor smiled sadly. “I can’t believe you even made it here today,” he said, then spoke more loudly. “There isn’t anything else I can give you, Kate. We’ll make sure you won’t suffer. I love you.”

Over the summer I’d driven numerous routes between the clinic and Kate’s home, but I got lost that Tuesday afternoon. Fillmore Avenue had somehow moved while we were in that doctor’s office, and Bush Street was on the wrong side of California. I drove around the block, talking to myself, and then pulled over and began again. Kate had always told me which way to go, but now she sat silently beside me in the front seat, eyes closed behind her dark glasses. While stopped at a light, a car rear-ended the Mercedes next to us and the crash of metal on metal froze my blood, but we did not speak. When we finally got home my mother said, “Well, you’ve had quite a ride.” There was a pause before Kate replied. “Yes, I have,” she said. Four days later, my funny, bright, brave sister died.

It’s a brutal fact: The price of a normal lifespan is outliving some people we love very much. We claim to know this, but when it arrives, grief has its shocking way with each of us uniquely. If we can’t choose when loss comes to visit us, we can choose to comfort others when it happens to them. We’ve probably all had a chance to be a friend to someone in grief, and it’s certain we’ll have more chances in the future.

But how? The last thing we want to do is intrude, or say the wrong thing. Death is a scary, often taboo topic in our culture. Being with someone who has lost a loved one can make us anticipate or relive our own losses, and it’s the most natural thing in the world to want to avoid emotional pain. But according to Robbie Miller Kaplan, author of How to Say It When You Don’t Know What to Say, we should not let our fears keep us away from the bereaved. “Death and bereavement are not contagious, and the experience of grief and mourning won’t make you more susceptible to it,” she says. Kaplan experienced the death of two infant children from a rare birth defect. Many years and two wonderful adopted daughters later, she wrote her book to consolidate the wisdom she’d learned through grieving and helping others grieve.

What to Say
Sometimes in our unease we are at a loss for what to say. “I am so sorry for your loss,” or “I’m so sorry this has happened,” are always appropriate. Or just be honest and tell them you haven’t taken this journey yourself yet, and you don’t know what to say or do. “It’s scary because you are afraid you’re going to hurt someone or that you’re going to be intrusive,” says Kaplan. “But I think you need to step in. You need to let someone know, hey you’re not alone.” It can be especially challenging with casual friends or acquaintances. You might say something like, “I don’t know you very well, but I’d like to do whatever I can to support you, even though I’m not sure what that would be.”

What Not to Say
“It’s God’s will.” “He’s in a better place.” “At least he didn’t feel much pain.” “When my sister died, she suffered for weeks.” All these phrases may seem comforting – to you – and may be intended to comfort your friend. But loss is what your friend feels, and anything that minimizes her loss may not be interpreted as supportive.

Just Listen
Perhaps the most important thing you can do is also the most difficult, and that is to truly listen to your friend. Kaplan says, “People are terrible listeners! They want to get their two cents in. Really what you need to do is just listen and give that person your undivided attention. Not to knit, not to be sorting the mail, not to have your cell phone on. When they’re telling you the story the second or third time you don’t tell them, ‘You’ve already told me that.’ Because people need to tell their story over and over again. That’s how we make sense of loss.”

We live in a fix-it society, and it can be frustrating to simply be with a beloved friend who is hurting. “We want to give them a solution,” says Kaplan. “We want to hurry it along.” That’s one reason why listening may be the most difficult job any friend can do in this situation. Recognizing that grief has many stages and that your friend must take it at her own pace is important for your own peace of mind. If you can, make sure you are there when your friend wants to talk, and give her the precious gift of your undivided attention.

Step Up
Especially in the acute phase of loss, your friend may not be able to tell you what she needs. Rather than say “Call me if you need anything,” say “What can I do?” and then follow up until you find something concrete. Or better yet, just do it! The night Kate died, one friend arrived with Chinese food while another came to take Kate’s dog away for the weekend. Two other close friends divided up the list of names in Kate’s address book, and started making those most difficult of phone calls. Freezer bags of homemade lamb stew and split pea soup appeared in the next couple of days, thanks to still more friends. What a tremendous tribute to my sister! These kind people inventoried their own talents and did something practical and immensely helpful, in all cases without being asked. A place to hold a memorial service, printed programs with Kate’s picture, an abundance of food after the service – all these things came about through the efforts of a quiet army of angels.

Do What You Can Do
Everyone has different skills, and everyone has something to give. One friend kept his distance throughout the ordeal of Kate’s death, until the toilet sprung a leak, when he showed up promptly and silently to fix it. Kaplan tells a story of a friend who lost her battle with cancer, leaving behind a husband and teenaged daughter. She told him to call her for the things no one else would do. Not surprisingly, he called for things that a mother would have done for his daughter. “Most of them are women’s things, practical things. I hemmed her skirt for band,” says Kaplan. “I made her sit next to me and showed her how to do it.”

If spending time with your friend is too painful for you, or if she needs to be alone, perhaps you can run some errands, or do yard work, or knit her a hat. If you think about it, there’s probably something you can do for your friend that nobody else can.

Hang In There
Your friend’s behavior may change as time passes. “You go through cycles with grief,” says Kaplan. “We tend to think we go through one stage and then another, but I learned in doing my research that you don’t go through the stages in order, and sometimes you go through them more than once.” Your friend may need time alone, and she may not have the emotional resources to express it very well. She may withdraw, and you may think it’s something you’ve done or said. Maybe it is! Even so, as in all relationships, sometimes the best you can do is keep the lines of communication open. Leave your friend a voice or e-mail that says, “I’m thinking of you. I understand if you’re taking some time. I’ll give you a call next week to see if you want to have coffee.”

There’s a lot to do when someone dies, and often those tasks keep the grieving person sane in their busy-ness. “Sometimes the acute period is okay because you’re in shock. The biggest problem is when the numbness begins to leave and you begin to feel things. That’s when most people leave,” says Kaplan. “The hardest thing with loss is that we all know what to do: We know to attend the funeral, we know to make a donation in the person’s name, we know to send a card, we know to bring a meal. Sometimes you do all of that and you think, OK, I’ve done the right thing, and we leave this person at the time when they’re coming to terms with their grief. We leave them alone when they’re the most vulnerable.”

Long after the funeral, your friend may still be dealing with her grief. She may especially appreciate your phone call or e-mail on the anniversary of her loved one’s death. The first holidays following a loss can be rough, and would be a good time to call your friend just to tell her you’re thinking about her. Our culture really doesn’t give us much time to grieve, and your friend could welcome the chance to talk about her loved one months or even years after the loss. Once I started to do the research for this article, I asked an acquaintance who had lost her mother three months back how she was doing with the loss. She seemed a little taken aback at first, but then grateful for the chance to talk. And I was surprised by the depth of her response. “It’s like I have lost the ceiling and the floor in my world,” she said. “It changes everything.”

I still miss Kate and I always will, but things that friends said, did and wrote continue to ease my heart to this day, a year and a half later. By doing these things for others in need, I feel I am honoring Kate’s memory. “Don’t be afraid to get involved,” Kaplan urges. “You’ll make a difference in someone’s life. You’ll cement relationships.” Even if we can’t be the floor or the ceiling for our grieving friends, perhaps we can find ways to be a wall to lean on.

Eileen Nicol is a frequent contributor to Seattle Woman.

©2007 Caliope Publishing Company