How to Help a Grieving Friend (Without Making It Worse)

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Your phone rings, and it’s a close friend. His wife died this morning. What do you say next?

Most of us don’t really know. We go quiet, or we say the first thing that comes to mind, and sometimes that makes it harder. Even if we never live through a major disaster, at some point someone you care about will lose someone he or she cares about.

Prepping isn’t only about supplies and worst-case scenarios. It’s also about being ready to help the people you care about through hard times, and a lot of people don’t handle this well. You can be the person who does.

TL;DR: To help a grieving friend, be present and listen more than you talk. Skip platitudes like “Everything happens for a reason,” say the name of the person who died, and offer specific help, such as meals, rides, or yard work. Don’t take anger personally, but keep your boundaries. Keep checking in for months, especially on birthdays and anniversaries, and watch for signs your friend needs professional help.

Why Helping a Grieving Friend Is Part of Prepping

We talk a lot about the importance of community in preparedness. Community isn’t only a list of people with skills and supplies. It’s made up of friends, family, and neighbors, and every one of them will face a major, life-altering loss at some point.

When that happens, the people around them have the chance to make the situation better. Most people truly care, but they often don’t know what to do. I’ve sat with a friend after a major loss and wanted to give a pep talk, thinking it would help. It came from good intentions, but it isn’t what a grieving person needs.

Because it feels awkward, many people pull away over time. Giving space can be a good thing until your friend needs someone there instead. A study of widowed adults found that the number of friends in their support networks dropped from about 12 to about 9 over roughly the first year and a half after the loss.

If your spouse or partner loses a parent or sibling, you are the person in the best position to help. Being the friend or partner who stays is a skill, and like any other skill, you can prepare for it using the same situational awareness you use everywhere else.

What Grief Actually Looks Like

Many people expect grief to follow five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. That model came from interviews with dying patients, not from people who had lost someone, and it isn’t how grief works for most people.

Grieving people don’t move through those feelings in order or check them off a list. Cleveland Clinic notes that people who are grieving often describe their emotions as coming in waves. Your friend can be fine in the morning and in tears by evening.

A Yale study of people grieving a natural death found that yearning for the person who died was the most common painful feeling. The same study found that acceptance was more common than disbelief, even soon after the loss.

Grief doesn’t always start at the moment of death, either. When someone has a long illness, such as dementia, the people closest to that person can begin grieving well before the death. A review of research on dementia caregivers found that spouses and heavily involved caregivers tend to feel this early grief more.

Grief can also last long after the funeral, so there is no schedule. Don’t expect your friend to be further along by a certain date. That’s you judging it from your perspective, and it’s often your own discomfort that makes you want to push. For most people, it gets better with time, but expect good days and bad days along the way.

This is where people learn who their acquaintances are and who their friends are.

You’ll Want to Fix It, and You Can’t

When someone you care about is hurting, it’s normal to want to make it better. That urge leads many people to try to cheer up a grieving friend, change the subject, or point out something positive. Even with good intentions, those efforts can come across as dismissive.

In a study of parents who had lost a child, every parent talked about hurtful things people said, including expecting them to get over it. Trying to fix grief tells your friend that what he or she feels is a problem to be solved, and it isn’t.

What helps is being there. Your job isn’t to fix the pain. Your job is to make sure your friend doesn’t go through it alone.

To keep yourself from trying to fix it, resist the urge to fill every pause or offer a solution. Let your friend feel what he or she feels without trying to talk your friend out of it, and accept that sitting with your friend, even in silence, is doing something good.

How to Be a Better Listener

When in doubt, listen more and talk less, much less. That’s one of the hardest things for me, because I love helping people. Sometimes people just want to vent, so if you’re not sure whether your friend wants to vent or wants help, ask.

Being a good listener shows your friend that the loss, and everything he or she feels about it, is okay to talk about. With PTSD, two of the things people want most are to know they’re not crazy for feeling the way they do and to know someone is there for them. The VA’s National Center for PTSD says the same about people in pain after a loss.

I’ve also always found it helpful when others showed empathy and talked about the person who died, including saying that person’s name.

What to Say and What Not to Say

Short, sincere statements work better than trying to come up with something clever or comforting. Speaking Grief lists phrases to avoid, including “Everything happens for a reason,” “They’re in a better place now,” anything that starts with “At least” or “You should,” “I know how you feel,” “Be strong,” and “It could be worse.” Don’t compare losses or turn the conversation to your own story.

Watch out for statements with an unspoken second half. “At least you had him as long as you did” can be heard as “so don’t be so sad.” If you can add “so don’t feel so bad” to the end of what you’re about to say, don’t say it.

What works are simple statements like “I’m here for you” or “I don’t know what to say, but I’m not going anywhere.” A text or a card that says “I’m thinking of you” helps, too. In 2019, when I went away to Deer Hollow during a hard stretch, a bunch of you sent me cards, and I can’t tell you how much that meant to me.

When Your Friend Lashes Out, Don’t Take It Personally

Grief often comes with anger, and that anger tends to go somewhere. Someone who is angry or hurting might take it out on the people closest to him or her, and because you’re there to help, that may be you.

It’s not your fault, and it’s not about you. Your friend is hurting, and you happen to be the person standing there. Stay calm, don’t argue, and don’t keep score.

Don’t match your friend’s tone, and let hurtful comments go without getting defensive in the moment. Decide ahead of time not to react. That’s your OODA Loop at work. If you said something you shouldn’t have, apologize.

That doesn’t mean you have to accept just anything. Know your limits and hold firm on your boundaries. Boundaries are about what you’re not willing to tolerate, and the time to set one is when you’re calm. If things start heading toward being too much, remove yourself before it gets abusive, and come back when things have calmed down. Your friend’s anger comes from the loss, not from anything you did.

How to Act, and When

“Let me know if you need anything” is well-meant, but it puts the work on the grieving person. Your friend may not know what he or she needs or may not want to impose. Offer something specific instead. Bring food, mow the lawn, pick up family members coming in from out of town, or make the phone calls your friend doesn’t want to make. The VA recommends specific, practical help like this, and it frees up your friend’s time to grieve.

Don’t be offended if your friend says he or she needs some time alone. Make it clear you’re available, and be there when your friend is ready.

The months after the funeral are when you matter most. Keep checking in. Put the anniversary of the death, birthdays, and holidays on your calendar, and reach out on those days.

When It’s More Than Grief

Grief is a normal response to loss, and for most people, the most intense grief eases with time. For some people, it doesn’t. Estimates reach as high as about one in ten grieving people developing prolonged grief, where intense grief still keeps a person from functioning more than a year after the loss.

I like to think that the amount of pain one feels at the loss of someone is directly proportional to the amount of love they had for the person.

Hopefully, you know your friend well, because the first weeks and months can also be dangerous. After losing a spouse, the risk of suicide is highest right after the death and stays higher than normal through the first year, especially for men. If your friend is a man who just lost his wife or someone close, keep a close eye on him.

Watch for warning signs, including self-destructive behavior, struggling to handle daily life for an extended time, talk of not wanting to live, or giving belongings away. If you see them, encourage your friend to talk to a counselor, a doctor, or a support group. Even better, offer to make the call and drive your friend there. If your friend talks about not wanting to live, take it seriously and don’t leave him or her alone. With help, people get through this.

Additional Information: If you or someone you know is in crisis in the US, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Veterans can press 1 to reach the Veterans Crisis Line.

Take Care of Yourself, Too

Supporting someone through grief is hard, and it wears on you over time. Feeling worn out, overwhelmed, or helpless at times is normal, and you may also be grieving the same person.

You might need support, too. Talk to someone a step removed from the loss, whether that’s your spouse, another friend, or a counselor. Take time away when you need it, especially when things are intense, be realistic about what you can do, and try not to offer more help than you can give.

If you start feeling overwhelmed, remind yourself that your friend’s grief isn’t yours to fix. You can’t stay steady for your friend if you neglect yourself.

The Bottom Line

Preparedness-minded people make situations better, not worse. When someone you care about loses someone, you won’t be able to fix it, and you don’t need to. Know what to expect. Listen more than you talk, keep what you say short and sincere, and don’t take the anger personally. Offer specific help and watch for signs your friend needs more help than you can give. Then keep showing up, especially in the months after everyone else has gone back to their own lives.

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