When Comforting Someone Who's Suffered a Loss - Here's What NOT To Do

 There are many right ways of helping someone who's just lost someone very dear to them. Unfortunately, there are many WRONG ways of offering comfort, and in my experience, most people do it wrong, even when they think they're doing it right.  I learned this following two very personal losses (the death of my 17-year-old son, and the suicide of his mother/my wife) eight years later when her unresolved grief became too much to bear).

Here are my experiences, and the lessons I learned from them.

Some years back, my son died instantly in a one-car crash while driving to early band practice at his high school.  We'd delayed letting him get his driver's license for a year (until he was 17) because we felt he first needed to demonstrate responsibility.  He'd only been driving for 8 days when he crashed.  The autopsy showed no signs of alcohol or drugs - he merely lost control while driving too fast, skidded out and hit a tree.  His seat belt wasn't enough to save him.  Those are the facts.

I reached out to many people for comfort - connecting with my fairly extensive online network of "list-friends."  In return, many people reached out to me o offer me comfort.  But instead of offering real help, most of them only made matters worse.

As they "offered comfort," I was shocked to learn how few really knew how to do that, and how many tried to help me by using this occasion to ease their own grief, while claiming to try and help me with mine.

When someone is in grief - when someone has suffered a great personal loss - the last thing he or she wants is to be burdened by other people's losses. 

To say, "I know how you feel, because I've lost someone, too, and I'm here for you ..." that shows compassion and deep understanding.

But to say, "I know how you feel because I lost my second cousin in a car crash, she'd been drinking and slammed into a bridge abutment on I-95, and lingered in intensive care, like a vegetable, for six weeks until my uncle had to pull the plug on her, it was the most horrific thing ever ... so yeah, I know how you feel ..." not so much.

In fact, I'm here to tell you that this approach does NOTHING for the grieving person, except add to their pain and suffering. That all-too-common approach is all about the "comforter" actually trying to reach out for comfort, to process his or her own grief.

I was inundated with so many stories of other peoples' losses - all of them pretending  to try and help me (and most of them believing that they were helping me).  But what they were actually trying to do was to work out their own grief. I had just lost my son, and I was in no shape to offer a shoulder to anyone else for their own loss. Yet that was what they expected of me - that I would lend them a shoulder, and commiserate with their loss. 

I'm sorry, but the death of my son does NOT equate to their loss of their second cousin ... to some extent, a loss is a loss, yes, but the closer the person, the deeper the loss.  And the more recent the loss, the more jaggedly painful.

But this is what happened, over and over - and believe it or not, one person actually tried to show that he understood my loss because he'd just lost his dog.  His dog!

If you are reaching out to comfort someone who's just experienced a tragic loss, it's OK to say, "I understand your grief, because I've suffered a loss, too."  But leave it at that. Don't work out the terms of your grief on that person.

Instead, after acknowledging having once experienced a non-specified loss, go on to say, "knowing what a loss feels like, I am here for you - in any way and every way that I can help." 

But then, instead of putting the responsibility for your help on the sufferer by saying, "how can I help?" - go ahead and offer several specific ways you can help. Ask, for instance, "do you need food?  Do you need someone to be with you, so you're not alone?  Do you need someone to drive you to the funeral home?" Offer those, or some other material support, then say ... "or anything else you might need, just know that I'm here for you."

Finally, don't forget the power of God, and the comfort of the Holy Spirit.  You could, of course, say, "I'll pray for you and the person you lost."  But don't just leave it there - take it a step further.

 For instance, ask, "would you like me to pray with you right now (in person or by phone)?"  Then, assuming they say yes, make sure your prayer is all about the person who's suffered the loss (not your own loss), and about how God can and will help that person. 

Going a step further, if the lost person is known to you to be a person of faith (i.e., someone you believe has accepted Christ), you can also talk about how that lost person is now with God.  But if you don't know that for a fact, don't go there ... the person who's just suffered a loss may be agonizing about whether their loved one IS with God.

If you have a favorite comforting scripture, a psalm or words of Jesus (or Paul, or anyone in the bible who comforted someone), share that, too. If you don't remember the verses verbatim, take a moment to look that scripture up (write it down if you need to) before calling - or calling on - someone to help with their grief.

So please, if someone you know suffers a loss, make your comfort specific to them.  Offer meaningful help and support - but don't just offer generalities, offer meaningful specifics. 

Not just, "I'll pray for you," but "can I pray with you right now." 

Not just "I understand, because I recently lost my pet goldfish" but "I understand because I've suffered a loss, too, so let me help you specifically, by doing a, b and c."

Sometimes the Answer is "No"

It is a tenet of my faith that God answers prayers.  This is something I believe with all of my heart, a belief bolstered by the many times that God has answered my own prayers, in ways that were - to me - put the reality of those answers beyond question.

However - and this is hard for many Christians to accept, as I've seen for myself - sometimes the answer to that prayer is "no."  When you're asking for something that is outside of God's will and plan for your life, God doesn't ignore that prayer, but He might just answer by saying "no." 

 God doesn't ignore that prayer, but He might just answer by saying "no"

In other blogs I've written here, I have talked about how God said "no" to Jonah (I'm not confused here - this is not about how Jonah said "no" to God). After Jonah realized that he really did need to follow God's command, he went to Nineveh where he preached doom.  To his surprise and disappointment, the people and the king of Nineveh did hear Jonah, and believed in what he was preaching, and repented.  Real sack-cloth and ashes time, honest and meaningful repentance.  God heard their groans of anguish, saw the true repentance in their hearts, and spared Nineveh the doom Jonah had foretold.

Jonah, whose people (the Israelites) considered Nineveh their sworn enemy, had looked forward to God's judgment. When it didn't come, he prayed to God to follow up on that promise, to smite the Ninevites.  God heard Jonah's prayer, but the answer he gave Jonah was a resounding "no."  Even though Jonah had (admittedly, reluctantly) done as God had commanded, and even though Jonah was indeed a prophet of God, God heard his prayer, but told him "no."

God heard Jonah's prayer, but God told him "no"

Which brings me to a very personal side of this issue, personal for me.  In 2007, eight years after our son had died in a one-car accident in September, 1999, my wife Karol was going through unimaginably deep suffering because of that loss.  Many years earlier, she'd lost a son who was born with profound, unsurvivable birth defects.  Following his inevitable death, she had never been able to properly grieve, and that loss festered in her soul.  Then nearly 20 years later, our son died in that awful crash.  Once again, she had been unable to properly grieve, and that loss, too, festered.  Even worse, the two boys' birthdays - and the anniversaries of their deaths - came very close together in calendar terms.

Each year from July through September, Karol went through an anguish that had to be seen to be believed.  This year, for reasons not clear, the suffering seemed to be worse.  Despairing of what I could do for her, I turned to God, and prayer.  Using the Psalms as my focal point - especially the ones in which David cried out to a God he felt had forsaken him - I prayed as I had never done before.  My prayers were daily events, often lasting hours, and filled with all the power of the emotions I was feeling.  And I asked others to pray for her as well - online prayer groups, our local church, friends - and those efforts were not in vain. People did pray for Karol.

People did pray for Karol

Still, her crisis seemed to deepen.  I knew God was listening - He had always listened to my prayers, and had often answered them in ways nothing short of miraculous - yet things only got worse for her.

Finally, I thought there was a change. She seemed more at peace, and things seemed to be returning to normal. We made plans to do things we enjoyed - something we hadn't done in weeks, perhaps months.  She even asked me to go to the store (at her request, and by my own choice, I had literally not left the house for a week - both of us were unwilling for me to leave her alone), so - feeling things had turned a corner, I went to the store to restock on groceries. 

Yet something didn't feel right

Yet something didn't feel right - I felt deeply that something was wrong, but I didn't know what.  I tried to call her, but she didn't answer, and for some reason, my blood ran cold.  I raced home, only to find the bedroom door locked.  It took me five minutes to disassemble the lock, and when I came in, I found Karol dead on the floor.

I called the police, who treated me like a murderer (no surprise there, and not really part of this story). More importantly, I called our priest.  She interrupted her vacation to rush to our home - to say last rites over Karol - and later she told me that she'd felt no evil there, that Karol was now finally at peace, a peace she had been unable to find in this life.

Karol was now finally at peace, a peace she had been unable to find in this life

I had prayed to God to help Karol find peace - in this life - but His answer was "no." 

That was hard for me to accept, and I "took' a vacation from God" as I came to terms with it.  I didn't stop believing in God, and I wasn't angry at God or filled with blame for Him.  Still, I needed to step back and come to terms with this, and God was gracious in letting me know that this was just fine with Him.

In mulling over what happened, I came to believe that His ultimate answer to my prayer was "yes, but on My terms" - Karol found peace she was so desperate to find - not in this life, though, but in the next life.