Say Something After Loss

I went to Vegas one year for a tournament and ran into a friend I only see at tournaments and now on social media.

This was about 5-6 years ago.

She had posted on FB a month or so before that a good friend of hers had passed away.  When I saw her a month later in the hallway to the convention area, I gave her a hug and then said, "Hey, sorry about your friend."

Her response was not what I was expecting, but little did I know it would slap me in the face years to come.

She was SO thankful I said I was sorry and for acknowledging his passing.  She told me, "You know what, not even my closest friends have really said that to me."  She actually went on quite a bit and shared her pain, hurt and heart that hardly anyone said anything to her about his passing.

I know the reason I said it - because I understand death; I understand the emptiness; I understand the sorry and the pain.

However, there so many others who know the effects of death, and yet they still don't/didn't say anything.

Fast forward 5-6 years.

One of my best friends, Dave, passed away TWO days before I went to Vegas to help run a tournament just this past May.  I ran into, I don't know, close to 100 people or more I knew.  Almost all are friends with me on FB, too, so if they saw any post from the last few months, they knew either Dave was very sick with his brain cancer or they found out he passed away just recently.

Only ONE person said they were sorry for my loss and one other mentioned him to me.

I'm speechless.

I am just at a loss honestly.  Empathy of losing a loved one means SO MUCH to a person after a loss.  And yet hardly anyone even says anything.

I get the excuse all the time that people are "scared to say something" or "think they shouldn't say something."  That's bullshit.

The honest truth is we are all busy living our own lives and we become distracted, maybe selfish and we don't think of what others are going through.  I'm guilty of this, too, so I'm not immune either.

Sure, some people are very helpful and nice.  And I know 99% of people never intentionally hurt others during tough times.  But it doesn't really matter to even be cognizant of all that, honestly.

Losing someone hurts.  It's painful.  It's sad.  And some of us would really love for a friend or acquaintance to say, "Hey, how you doing?  Sorry to hear about Dave."

Instead, it's an after thought.

Like she said, even with our closest friends, we hardly hear anything.  And for some reason, it's always the ones we wish we would hear from that seem to really make it all worse.

My advice is SAY SOMETHING.  Anything.  If they don't want to talk about it, that's okay - at least you showed you care.  But, loss is not the elephant in the room.  We want our loved ones to be acknowledged and remembered; not ignored.

People think it's painful to bring up the loss of a loved one.  What's painful is when they aren't brought up at all while we suffer alone.