Not long after Brady died I became loudly and obscenely enraged at a family member who insisted on trying to tell me something about his death that I really, really did not want to hear. My outburst cast a pall over Thanksgiving dinner, which was already not very joyous since it was less than two months after my son’s death.

Speaking

Since then, I’ve been luckier. Few people have said things to me that I found seriously irritating. When they have, I’ve generally calmly informed them what they were saying could be considered offensive. As best I can recall, in every case they’ve swiftly apologized and switched tacks.

Not everybody is so fortunate. One of the most common complaints grieving people have is about the number of insensitive, foolish, ignorant or just plain mean things other people say to them.

Recently I asked members of an online bereavement grief support group what they wanted people to say and do.  My specific question was, “In a perfect world, if you could make the rules, how would people treat you since your loved one’s death?”

They responded energetically. I only asked out of curiosity. But as the number of comments grew to nearly 100, it occurred to me that I could come up with a list of the supportive statements bereaved people want to hear. So that’s what I did.

One of the most common complaints grieving people have is the number of insensitive, foolish, uninformed or just plain unkind things that other people say to them.

The first thing I did was to remove everyone’s names from the comments in the interest of preserving their privacy. Then I read each comment carefully and assigned it to one or more categories of things people could say or do.

I counted how many people wanted to hear each type of comment. Then I figured the percentage of people who liked each one and ranked them by popularity. I used a spreadsheet program to do this so it wasn’t too difficult.

The results are below. Each item on the list gives a brief summary of what people would like someone to say or do. Then it gives the percentage of people who named that particular response. Some people named several. The list:

  1. Offer to help out in some way, 21.7%
  2. Share a memory of the lost loved one, 18.8%
  3. Just listen, 17.4%
  4. Call/text/visit, 15.9%
  5. Say the lost loved one’s name, 13%
  6. Invite the bereaved person out, 11.6%
  7. Be kind, 11.6%
  8. Ask how the bereaved person is doing, 11.6%
  9. Give them a hug, 8.7%
  10. Be generally supportive, 8.7%
  11. Express sorrow about the loss, 7.25%
  12. Offer no advice, 7.25%
  13. Do not judge the bereaved person, 5.8%
  14. Other, 4.35%
  15. Unsure or it varies, 2.9%

(Percentages total over 100 because some of the 69 comments named more than one type.)

Note that there wasn’t anything that everybody wanted to hear. Nothing even got a majority endorsement. Some people specifically said they didn’t want to hear things that other people specifically said they did want to hear.

There is a lot of variety in what bereaved people want to hear, it seems. However, some things are a little more likely to be well-received than others.

There wasn’t anything that everybody wanted to hear. Nothing even got a majority endorsement.

Based on these results, offering to help out, sharing a memory of a lost loved one and just listening are your best bets for saying or doing something that will be appreciated by a bereaved person. A call or visit, saying the name of the lost loved one, an invitation out, simple kindness and asking how the bereaved person is doing are the next most-popular.

I’d avoid offering advice. Nobody seemed to like that.

And don’t judge the bereaved person. Suggesting they should be over the loss by now was an especially unpopular way to go.

Whatever you do, take these results with a grain of salt. I’m no trained researcher. I have no doubt my little exercise has significant flaws when it comes to design, data collection and analysis and would get the thumbs-down from a scientific reviewer.

One problem is that the sample size – 69 people after some were cut for being irrelevant or unclear – is small. They are likely not representative of all grievers either. That’s because, as active members of an online grief support group, they may be having more difficulty coping than a lot of bereaved people.

One thing that seems clear is that there is no one thing or several things that all grievers want to hear.

Also, the respondents are almost all females. Men might have different attitudes. I, for instance, am interested in hearing practical tips for effective grief coping. None of these commenters wanted advice and several specifically said they didn’t.

They also mostly had lost spouses. This may explain why the most popular request was for someone to offer to help out. It would probably be different if most of the commenters had lost, say, children.

When Brady died, I didn’t lose a helper. I lost my son. I’m a divorced empty nester who has lived alone for many years. Getting assistance with tasks is a low priority for me and, I suspect, many other bereaved parents, siblings and children.

One thing that seems clear is that there is no one thing or several things that all grievers want to hear. If somebody says something you don’t like, you may consider whether you can always say exactly what another griever wants to hear. Then, if you’re so inclined, you might cut the offender some slack.

For my part, I think I can better understand why some non-bereaved people are leery of saying anything at all to someone who is grieving. We can be prickly, understandably. And how is anybody supposed to know what we want? We don’t all want the same thing.

Does Hearing What You Want Help You Feel Better Sooner?

Now that we have some ideas about what we’d like people to say or not say, the next question that occurs to me is: Does it matter? If we hear what we want, are we likely to recover from this pit of blackness faster and more fully?

A number of scientific studies have tried to answer that. The best I’ve run across is titled, “Does Social Support Help In Bereavement.” It was published in 2005 and included as co-authors two big-name grief researchers in Wolfgang Stroebe and Margaret S. Stroebe from Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Before doing their study, they carefully and in considerable detail reviewed several other studies of this question. They concluded the evidence was mixed. Some researchers found positive effects of social support. Others didn’t. They designed this study to come up with a more definitive answer.

Their research was based on a multi-year study of 216 recently widowed women aged 65 and older who lived in Detroit. The widows were part of a larger group of married couples who were interviewed and assessed while both spouses were alive. As time passed, nature took its course and some of the partners died. (This study didn’t look at men because there weren’t enough new widowers in the sample.)

Having a pre-loss depression evaluation helped researchers see how a husband’s death affected the surviving women. As the study progressed, the widows’ depression symptoms were measured three more times at six, 18, and 48 months after bereavement to see how they were coping.

At the same intervals, researchers also asked the widows about their perceived level of social support. One question was, “On the whole, how much do your children (friends and relatives) make you feel loved and cared for?” Another was “How much are your children (friends and relatives) willing to listen when you need to talk about your worries or problems?”

By comparing the level of support the widows perceived with the severity of their depression symptoms,  researchers hoped to find out whether perceived support made a difference.

The researchers wrote, “The bereaved who perceive their level of social support as high appear to recover at the same rate as those with low levels of social support.”

Like other grief studies, this one found bereaved people were more or less back to normal after a while. At the 48-month mark, they weren’t any more likely to be depressed than non-bereaved people.

But while the passage of time helped a lot, perceived social support didn’t seem to make much difference. The researchers wrote, “The bereaved who perceive their level of social support as high appear to recover at the same rate as those with low levels of social support.”

Summing Up Social Support

This Detroit study doesn’t mean it’s wonderful to have other people say or do things that infuriate or sadden you. On the other hand, annoying remarks may not actually affect your recovery. According to this study, you may get back to feeling more like your old self just as quickly and completely even if you are surrounded by insensitive loudmouths.

My own research – if I can use that word to describe such an amateurish effort – suggests that different grievers may have very different preferences about what they want to hear. Even other bereaved people don’t automatically and infallibly know what to do or say. There doesn’t seem to be any single right thing.

You may be able to return to feeling more like your old self just as quickly and completely even if you are surrounded by insensitive loudmouths.

I know this well. Things I’ve said about grief have gotten me banned from four online support groups and I’ve been harassed into leaving a few more. I now understand that some bereaved people are deeply offended by my optimistic, practical, activist approach to coping. To me it seems natural. To me it’s the only way to go. Not to everybody. Different strokes.

Even other bereaved people don’t automatically and infallibly know what to do or say. There doesn’t seem to be any single right thing.

It is not my intention to tell anyone how to grieve or how not to grieve. With Grief Science, I try to expose hurting, desperate people to evidence-based grief coping strategies that may not have occurred to everyone. If you want to try one or more, great. If not, also great. If you think I’m an annoying idiot, you are not the only one.

Thanks for reading, commenting, following and sharing Grief Science. I am sorry for the losses that brought all of us here. And I hope we can each get some peace today.