So many people I love and care about have experienced life-changing loss. And I mean the kind of loss that those of us who haven’t experienced it ourselves can barely begin to imagine. This post is for us. The ones who love and care for the bereaved. The ones standing alongside people whose worlds have fallen apart, desperately wishing we could do something, anything, to make it a little easier.
Because watching someone you love suffer is its own kind of helplessness.
You want to take away their pain. You want to make their day a little better, make them smile, or give them five minutes when the weight of everything feels a little less heavy. You want to lighten their load, somehow ease their grief, and help them find their way through the darkness. But you can’t. And we rarely talk about how difficult that is.
We know that our sadness at watching someone else grieve pales into insignificance beside the grief they are experiencing themselves. We know this isn’t about us. So we swallow our own feelings and focus on being there for them. But that burning desire to help, coupled with the knowledge that we cannot fix, rescue or make everything better, is a real thing.So how do we love people well when they are experiencing a loss we cannot fix?
“But I don’t really want help”
One of the things I’ve been reflecting on recently is how difficult it can be to know what someone needs when they are grieving.
When you lose someone you love, particularly a life partner, the world can feel completely unreal. That can be true even when you know the death is coming, perhaps because the person is receiving end-of-life care. When a death happens suddenly, there is the same overwhelming struggle to comprehend what has happened.
You are in shock. Your emotional rock has gone. The person you trusted with everything, the person you could talk to about absolutely anything without fear of judgement, is no longer there. How can anyone else possibly help with that? There is an emptiness that is difficult to describe. And yet, life carries on demanding things of you. There are practical arrangements to make, paperwork to complete, meals to cook, washing to do and children to care for. When you have young children, you are suddenly doing all the things you once shared with another parent. You keep going because you have to.
From the outside, that can look like coping. But managing the practicalities of life doesn’t mean you are okay. Grief doesn’t follow a timetable, either. Something seemingly small can hit you like a brick wall, sometimes years after the death. Which is worth remembering when we think someone should be feeling better by now.
The dreaded question: “How are you?”
We ask it because we care. We want to check in, to show that we are thinking about someone, to give them an opportunity to talk. But sometimes, particularly in the early days of bereavement, being asked “How are you?” can feel frustrating. Because the honest answer is: I am not okay. My heart is breaking. My life has changed beyond recognition. The person I want to tell all this to is the very person who has died. And yet, physically, I might be fine. I might have got dressed, taken the children to school, answered some emails or even managed to smile at something.
How am I supposed to answer your question? Perhaps we can change the question into an offer of connection: “I’m thinking of you today. If you need anything, practical or emotional, please know that I’m here for you.” There is something lovely about that. It doesn’t demand an answer. It doesn’t require the bereaved person to reassure you that they are managing. It simply reminds them that they are being thought of and that support is available. Perhaps that is what matters most: letting someone know they haven’t been forgotten, without asking them to do the emotional work of explaining how they are feeling.
Find people who understand
We can listen, empathise and love someone through grief, but there can be a particular comfort in being with people who understand the experience from the inside. Bereavement support groups can provide that connection. Groups such Widowed and Young bring together people who have experienced the loss of a partner, while other services support people experiencing different kinds of bereavement.
You don’t necessarily have to explain yourself. You don’t have to find the right words or worry that someone will be frightened by the intensity of your feelings. Other people in the room know that grief can be messy, exhausting, unpredictable and isolating. Sometimes, simply knowing that you are not the only person navigating this new and unwanted reality can make a difference.
The same is true for children. Children who lose a parent need space to grieve in ways that make sense to them. Their understanding of death and their ability to express their emotions will vary depending on their age, personality and circumstances. Specialist bereavement support can help them understand their emotions, remember the person who has died and connect with other children who have experienced a similar loss.
Activities such as making memory boxes, writing messages to the person who has died or creating something that represents special memories can give children ways to express feelings that might otherwise be difficult to articulate. Imagine a child choosing green to represent playing Minecraft with their dad, red to represent love, or yellow to represent trips to Legoland. These ordinary memories become something tangible, a reminder of the relationship and the moments that mattered.
But perhaps one of the most important things these groups offer is friendship. Other children might not know what to say or how to respond to their loss. But children who have experienced something similar can understand without needing everything explained. There is something incredibly powerful about people brought together by something heartbreaking finding ways to support one another and extending that support to others who find themselves walking the same path.
If you know a family experiencing bereavement, it may be worth helping them explore what specialist support is available. Organisations such as Child Bereavement UK and Barnardo’s also provide bereavement-related support and resources for children and families. Local groups are about too, came across Morgans Wings a few years ago who do work supporting Mums and Dads after miscarriage here in Cardiff, as an example. My pal Anna started her charity Believe after the loss of her husband and son, offering organ donor support. We don’t have to know all the answers ourselves. Sometimes, helping someone find the right support is one of the most valuable things we can do.
Listen. And don’t try to fix it.
One of the most important things we can offer someone who is grieving is a listening ear.
Sometimes, they simply need to feel heard. To be able to say out loud all the emotions they are experiencing, without someone judging them, correcting them or trying to make it better. Listening can be more important than speaking. We are often uncomfortable around grief because we don’t know what to say. We worry about saying the wrong thing, making someone cry or reminding them of something painful. But the reality is that their loss is already there. We don’t create it by acknowledging it. And we don’t need to find some extraordinary words of wisdom to make a difference.
“I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t know what to say, but I’m here.”
“I’ve been thinking about you.”
Sometimes, that is enough.
We also need to resist the urge to provide answers. There may be doubts, fears, frustrations and questions that have no satisfying resolution. The bereaved person may need to express those feelings without being told to look on the bright side, find a reason for what happened or focus on moving forward.
And there will be days when they don’t want to talk at all. That doesn’t mean they won’t want to talk tomorrow. Keep showing up. Keep the door open. Don’t take silence personally. And don’t disappear because you are worried you might say the wrong thing.Talk about the person who died, too. Share the memories you have of them. Say their name. You don’t need to pretend the loss hasn’t happened just because mentioning it might bring tears. Sometimes, talking about someone who has died is a way of reminding the bereaved that the person they loved mattered to other people too. Their life is still remembered. Their stories are still told. Their place in the world has not been erased.
Don’t just offer help. Offer something specific.
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do.” How many times have we said those words?
We mean them sincerely. We want to help. But when you are grieving, even knowing what help you need can be difficult. You may be exhausted, overwhelmed and struggling to concentrate. You might not have the energy to work out what would make life easier, let alone ask someone else to do it.
So instead of offering help in the abstract, try offering something specific.
- Cook a meal you know they like and drop it off. You don’t necessarily need to stay for a visit; sometimes the gift of a meal without the obligation to socialise is exactly what is needed.
- Offer to take the children out for a few hours.
- Ask if you can do the shopping, put a load of washing on or help with the ironing.
- Offer to accompany them to an appointment or help with a practical task they have been putting off.
And remember that the needs of a bereaved person don’t end after the funeral, when the flowers have faded and everyone else has returned to their usual routines. In some ways, that is when the loneliness can become even more pronounced. The initial flurry of support has passed, but the person is still gone. The children still need caring for. The house still needs running. The paperwork and responsibilities don’t disappear.
Keep checking in. Keep offering practical support. Keep remembering. You may not be able to make the grief smaller, but you can make the burden of everyday life a little lighter.
Finding gratitude alongside grief
One of the things I’ve been thinking about is how loss can change the way we experience the ordinary moments of life.
When you’ve experienced profound loss, the rain falling against your face or the wind blowing through your hair can take on a different significance. You notice the physical sensation of the cold air, hear the birds outside or listen to the sound of cars passing as people go about their everyday lives.
There can be something refreshing about simply being alive to experience these things. There is an awareness that one day, we too will be gone. One day, we will no longer experience these simple physical sensations or hear the familiar sounds of the world around us. And there is gratitude in being alive to experience them now. But that gratitude exists alongside the sadness. Because there is also the pain of experiencing all these things without the person you love. The beauty of a moment can sit alongside the ache of wishing they were there to share it. I think that is an important distinction. We sometimes talk about gratitude as though it should cancel out sadness. As though recognising the good things in our lives means we should feel less pain about the things we have lost.
But perhaps we can hold both.
We can be grateful for the sunshine and still miss the person who would have enjoyed it with us. We can laugh at a memory and cry a moment later. We can appreciate the life we have while desperately wishing that life had unfolded differently. We can look towards the future without being ready to leave the past behind. Grief and gratitude are not mutually exclusive. Neither are hope and heartbreak. And perhaps, over time, there is room for both the sadness of what is missing and the appreciation of what remains.
So, what can we do?
I’ve been reflecting on how often we approach grief with the desire to make it better.
We want to find the right words, offer the perfect advice or do something that will ease the pain. We want to help people move towards a place where they are okay again.
And that desire comes from love. But perhaps supporting someone through loss isn’t about making them okay. Perhaps it is about allowing them not to be okay, while making sure they don’t have to face everything alone.
It is about listening without judgement. Remembering the person who died. Offering practical help rather than waiting to be asked. Finding communities and specialist support where people can feel understood. And continuing to show up long after the rest of the world has moved on.
It is also about accepting our own helplessness. We cannot rescue someone from grief. We cannot take their pain away, however much we wish we could. We cannot make the world right again for them. But we can sit alongside them in the brokenness.
We can remind them that they are loved, that they are remembered, and that they don’t have to put on a brave face for our benefit. We can be patient when they don’t want to talk and available when they do. We can help with the washing, deliver a meal, remember an anniversary or send a message that asks for nothing in return. Small things, perhaps. Ordinary things. But sometimes, when someone’s world has been turned upside down, ordinary acts of love are exactly what help them get through the day.
And for those of us who love the bereaved, perhaps that is where we need to begin. Not by trying to fix the unfixable. But by learning how to stay. You don’t need to have the right words. You don’t need to understand exactly how someone feels. You don’t need to make their grief disappear. You just need to keep showing up, in whatever ways you can, with love, patience and compassion.
Because sometimes, the most important thing we can offer someone is not a solution. It is the reassurance that, even in the darkest season of their life, they are not alone.
This blog was written back in 2021/2022 and updated in 2026
