Some friends’ lack of support after sister’s suicide not uncommon

email or call me.

If I continue to participate in my usual social circles when I feel up to it, I will see some of these “friends.” What do I say to them? I simply cannot imagine sitting down to dinner with them or discussing a book or anything else in their presence. Do I simply stop participating in these activities? If not, how do I handle seeing those who have ignored me?

— Heartsick and Hurt

What a terrible loss, I’m sorry.

You’re not alone in seeing some of your people vanish just as you need them most; such vanishing is a common, and cruel, byproduct of death in a culture where the rituals aren’t universal, established and clear.

This is not to excuse anyone’s silence, merely to explain it: It actually is a question I get fairly often, from people who don’t know how to respond to someone’s grief, then hesitate out of indecision and fear of missteps, then realize their silence has now lasted an unseemly amount of time, then are moved to ask me or others, “Is it too late to say something?” Deaths by suicide especially seem to trigger this kind of support paralysis.

Something else I see in your letter that suggests these people fell through this same uncertainty crack: You describe them as friends of proximity. They happened to join the same club, move to the same neighborhood, work at the same place. So they are going to care about you, but not necessarily feel comfortable rushing to your side in a crisis, deducing you have closer friends for that.

Again — not to excuse this, just to explain.

It would be a loss atop a loss, though, if you were to drop valued groups and activities in response. Please maintain your connections. Just see truth, then proceed as you see fit from there.