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3 Things People Said After the Sudden Death of My Dad that Actually Comforted Me

People who know how to offer support in times of grief are invaluable

Chelsey Flood
4 min readMar 23, 2021
Photo by dylan nolte on Unsplash

It can be difficult to know what to say when somebody is grieving. Fear of saying the wrong thing can lead us to avoid the bereaved person altogether.

If we were given clear guidelines about what to say after somebody dies, we would all feel more comfortable. Whether we have lost somebody dear to us or are wishing to offer our support.

With this in mind, I am sharing some of the things people said that comforted me after my father died suddenly.

1. “It sounds like you were both trying your best, and that’s all you can really do.”

After somebody dies it is natural to experience guilt. You wish you’d visited them more or pushed them to go the doctors. You regret mean things that you said fifteen years or fifteen days ago.

I hadn’t spoken to my dad for a week or so because I’d been processing some difficult stuff in therapy. I’d needed some time to myself, and so I’d asked for it. This was the first time I’d made such a request.

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