Why have friends ignored my grief?

DEAR BEL,

I’M in a quandary. Years ago, a good, long-standing friend of mine never acknowledged my parents’ passing, in any way at all.

Not a word. Yet I was always there for her with my love and support when things went wrong. I try to be like that with all my other friends, too, as I feel it’s in my DNA to be sensitive if that doesn’t sound too strange.

But now that sense of real sadness and disappointment has happened again — with a different, longstanding friend.

A close young relative passed away within my family, and so naturally I messaged this friend. Not a peep came back until late that evening — and she does normally answer straight away. It was just a little text to ask how I was.

Am I being unreasonable to think my friend should have said more and shown she was there for me — as I was ( and still am) very emotional and upset?

I know I would have done much more for her had the situation been reversed. Friends I’ve known only a short time have shown more support.

MARY

WHAT a sad loss this is ( especially because your relative was young), and I am so sorry for you and the rest of your family.

I chose your short letter this week because it speaks of a subject very close to my heart: bereavement.

What’s more, it’s a topic which comes back and back again to this page, because each time somebody loses a loved one (every single day, of course) you can be sure they are likely to be disappointed by the response of somebody they know.

Unless you are very, very lucky this will happen — and I’m afraid it must be endured.

In all the years that I have been writing and broadcasting about bereavement ( since 1976, in fact) the anecdotes have flooded in: the neighbour who crossed the road to avoid talking to you, the warm acquaintance who skulked behind a rack in a clothing store, the in-laws who had a gift delivered in a taxi rather than call in person (that happened to me), the blokes who fell briefly silent in the pub when you walked in and then started talking about the football with grim determination, the old friend who much later explained sheepishly she hadn’t been in touch because she ‘didn’t know what to say’.

And so on. Each story might sound trivial, yet it reveals appalling shallows of insensitivity and selfishness in those who failed, and depths of hurt in those who were grieving.

To readers in general, let me give you advice you have not asked for. If somebody you know suffers the loss of a loved one, do not send a text or an email.

If you are local, pay a visit — even if only to leave flowers and a note on the doorstep. If you are at a distance, pick up the phone. Or take paper and a pen and write a proper letter, because you will find that is treasured more than anything.

If you have no idea what to say, just find some uplifting words online (there are plenty out there) and copy them out. People need a death to be acknowledged. Somebody who walked this earth does so no longer — and that matters. Please remember it.

The only way to cope, Mary, is to try to explain the neglect away in terms of terror. Yes, people are so terrified of their own mortality they run screaming from the skull in the mirror — that death’s head of Halloween that was ‘celebrated’ a week ago.

It’s such an irony, that October 31 has become another yearly commerce-fest when people are happy with a horror- show of skulls, blood, ghosts, graves and spiders — and yet those same people are probably incapable of coping with the real thing.

No matter how attitudes to death seem to have changed, no matter how many bereavement counsellors try to help, loss will always be a lonely thing.

You long to be asked questions, to share memories, to feel the arm about your shoulders which says, ‘I know how you feel and really sympathise.’

But if (when?) those you care for fail to give you the support you need, there is no alternative but to expect and accept. Otherwise you would drown in your own tears.

So I am suggesting that you feel glad of the attention from those newer friends who have been kind, but think of the perceived neglect you have endured from others as part of the human condition. This isn’t about being kind to

them but about sparing yourself sadness and stress. Because you have enough already, don’t you?

So onwards, one step at a time — in the knowledge that those we have loved and lost walk beside us all the way, urging us silently to live our lives in beauty for their sake.