Why are people trying to downplay how awful this is?

Thank you once again, my grief counsellor told me this although she said many say ( including me) that they are sure they will never be happy again. But she said 'you' are still in there somewhere and bits of you will come back out over time. My DH she said is grieving for my son and for seeing me hurt and they call it secondary grief and he says things like that in the context of he feels useless and just wishes he could turn the clock back.

Oh, love…

A mother losing her child is… different. There’s something about the process that no one can completely understand but losing a child that you raised and nurtured and sacrificed for is a pain that very few people ever get over. BUT a type of normalcy (a new normal) will return! You will be happy and funny and “lovely” (I’m sure you’re still lovely!) again; yes, it may always be a bit harder to be “you” when it feels like a piece of “you” is missing. I wish I could promise the pain goes away. Cannae, but I do promise that everyone who has told me about this experience (losing a child) says that it does change over time, sort of smoothing out the worst edges of it, making it not as sharp, and giving you the ability to remember happiness with the past without feeling sadness at the present.

Thank you so much, l love your belief system and will try to adopt that. I am trying very hard to believe a robin that comes in my garden is my son, every time l get upset and am really struggling, it's uncanny how he pops up at that moment. Other strange things have happened, really uncanny.
It certainly does change everything. My DH ( not his dad but loved him like a son) said the other day , not in a selfish way, that he missed me, the old me , happy, funny and lovely (his words not mine ! ). I said l miss me too 😢Life will never be the same, we miss him so much.

My husband lost his dad at 23 suddenly. It was so traumatic it changed his entire personality, gave him a sense of mortality that men don’t usually develop until their 50s. It result in a lot of risky, borderline suicidal behaviours for a bit until eventually he learned to handle his grief. It’s absolutely awful that your colleagues can’t sympathise here — might be a good time to reassess why you work in the team. I wouldn’t want to work with losers like that.

The only grief vulture I see on this thread is the OP.

All the handwringing over a sad situation as if it was the greatest tragedy on earth, and making this thread to repeatedly accuse people of downplaying the situation by conversationally mentioning their own experience of grief to show they understand grief. Crossly ranking and downplaying their grief.

People hate talking about death, or cancer, in particular, but death is a very difficult topic for most people and most people don't handle it especially well.

And this is all in the office! It's bizarre behaviour on behalf of the OP.

Agree with the last part, not the rest though. It's ironic that OP gets criticized for establishing a "hierarchy of grief" when they were the one taking issue with others comparing their experiences to the daughter's.

FWIW, I think we would all agree that the loss of a parent at the age of 10 or so is incomparable to the loss of a parent at the age of 50 - which means there is a hierarchy of sorts. I think it's due to the fairly advanced age of the daughter that we think comparisons permissible.

It really doesn't matter if same had been said to the 23 y/o herself as far as OP's issue with the reaction to a third party is concerned. It does beg the question though whether they would also project their own experience onto the loss of her parent to the daughter's face.

If they don't, then that would imply the speaker knows it would be wrong to tell her this in person - which is interesting IMO.

It implies there's both a social and a "moral" dimension to empathy. In the absence of a personal history of loss, how would we react and feel?

I think projection is a coping mechanism in the face of an untimely death. I'd love to read a follow-up by OP about how those same people ended up talking to the daughter about her loss.

I agree - my dad didn’t technically die until I was 39, but his accident when I was 18 was so bad that I essentially grieved then as if he HAD died. He was in a near-vegetative state for 21 years after his accident with catastrophic brain damage. Everything that made him “my father” WAS gone the day of his accident, though his body was left behind.

My friends at the time were of course around my own age, with a few of them a couple of years younger (16 or so.) Most of them had no idea what to say or do, and of course none had lost a parent. A few did tell me they understood because they’d lost a grandparent. I wasn’t offended and I didn’t think they were grief vultures, they were just trying to make a connection and comfort me during a time that none of them knew how to deal with.

One friend (who was 16) did express utter disbelief and horror when she learned my family was going to be taking care of my dad at home and not placing him in a facility, after he came out of hospital 6 months after his accident. She said “I’d NEVER take care of MY parents like that!” At the time it hurt me badly, because I was still in shock, pain, and grief, and the only thing I still DID have left of my father was the fact that his body was still alive and needed to be cared for. But my friend was young, had never experienced any kind of loss or grief, and she didn’t mean to be cruel. 25 years later, I know she didn’t mean to hurt me, she just couldn’t understand it at the time.

The tl;dr is that sometimes people try to say something to one who is hurt and grieving because they feel badly for the person who is grieving. They are trying to comfort that person. Sometimes what they say comes out wrong or sounds like they are trying to “show off” their own experiences with grief and loss. It doesn’t make them a horrible person or a selfish a-hole, it makes them a normal human being.

I remember someone commenting once that they knew exactly what someone who lost their mum in their 20s went through because they had a housemate who had the same experience. And I thought, no you don't, you know what it's like to support someone who went through it. You only know what it's like if you experienced it yourself. And even then the circumstances, grieving process and family dynamics will be different.

They sound like absolutely lovely friends. And yes, unfortunately, the “funeral security” job often rests on the shoulders of friends and extended family when they’re grief stricken themselves. Perhaps telling them about the concept of a grief vulture may help them understand and identify behavior they see in the future, and it sounds like they know how to deal with it! ♥️

Yes, it's been an interesting thread :)

Thank you for explaining about grief vultures.

I'm going to visit my mother's friends in their village next month, I'm going to give them a big hug for being my funeral security. So kind of them, especially since they were griefstruck themselves.

Honestly, I don’t know how I feel about OP’s colleagues. I think maybe their comments were a bit ridiculous, along the lines of, “People don’t know what to say so they just say something.” But yes, I think on the whole, it wasn’t grief vulture behavior; that’s more like what you experienced with this beautician. I think a lot of people make foolish comments when confronted with grief because we’re not a very expressive society (I’ve been places where, when you just say you lost your parents and not even how long ago, they grab you in a great bear hug and start crying for you! 😂 I found it very kind and comforting, not trying to “steal” or “compare” grief, but some people might find that absolutely stifling and over-involved). I do understand that we’re all different and as you can see on this thread, we feel a lot of different ways.

And yes! It is not uncommon with a grief vulture for someone to have to act as “funeral security,” to keep the CF or CFs away from the actual family and friends. I always hated when that was required!

A parent should never see their child for, it must be the worst thing in the world.

Thank you for your kind words.

I imagine your hospice work has trained you to spot the grief vultures, who really are obnoxious.

In my case, I wasn't confronted by the beautician's grief vulturing at my mother's funeral because I'd seen her somewhat hyperbolic condolence card and had mentioned to one of my mother's friends that I found it weird and described my previous encounters with her. So my mother's friends quietly made sure she came nowhere near me and my sister during the funeral - like they were heading her off and distracting her every time she tried. Only a year later did I learn how she had been telling everyone how close she'd been to my mother and me. My mother had lovely friends, because she was lovely herself.

But I think in the OP's story of her colleagues, there wasn't any grief vulturing going on, it was just people trying to empathise and perhaps even process their own shock at such terrible news.

I think this is what I’m worried about, for anyone reading this thread. I know I sound daft, but people with autism in particular (I’m on the spectrum) will naturally use an experience to relate to people, but when you ALWAYS mention something that happened to you when someone mentions something that happened to them… until I learned NOT to do this, and to sometimes just say either “I’m sorry” or nothing at all, I lost a lot of friends. People will assume you’re not listening to them, and sometimes you honestly aren’t, because you’re thinking about what to say next.

And doing this when discussing death and loss is a bad look, because unfortunately, a lot of people can’t tell if you’re autistic or just a self-centered arsehole. And I mean “unfortunately,” because I personally would love a big blinking sign that says, “NOT AN ARSEHOLE; JUST AUTISTIC. GIVE ME A MINUTE.”

This is awful, and I can’t believe the florist did this - yes, it is incredibly disrespectful of the last message you wanted to share with your son! I know it may not help, but in my belief system, he looked down and saw the correct flowers that said “Rest in Peace,” because that’s what you said with your heart. I’m incredibly sorry for your loss and cannot even imagine the pain; I’ve counseled people who have lost children and it changes everything.

Sounds like they are trying to emphasise. For info - neurodivergent people are very likely to quote a similar experience in order to show empathy. It’s a very common way to show you understand. Also, if one of my colleagues had a wife who was dying I wouldn’t feel sad, unless I had a personal connection to them. I have autism and would try to show I cared by sharing a similar experience.

I also am an hsp and empath. I’ve honed those skills to better feel where my dd is emotionally as she’s had a lot of issues, still as yet unresolved but improving. I see someone, who is very emotionally blocked and doesn’t want to deal with emotions at all. It may be this is all a defence mechanism and complete emotional shut down as op is coming across as the opposite of empathetic.

In the same vein l hate 'RIP' l was furious at my son's funeral florists for shortening my final message to my son Rest in Peace , my beautiful son to RIP etc.
He was well worth writing out a few extra bloody letters, just made my blood boil tbh. Felt so disrespectful and cba'd .

@LouiseMadetheBestBroccoliPasta I’m sorry you had to deal with that when losing your mother! It’s really awful. And yes, this often happens, where the loved ones of the deceased (including friends) are insulted by the grief vulture who suddenly claims they were the deceased’s best friend.

I hate that people do this, but please just know you’re not alone (I don’t know if that helps at all? Maybe not!) - I’ve seen it happen when people have lost mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, children… it’s one of the most selfish actions in human behavior. No one can think logically that pretending they were closer to the deceased than the deceased’s own family is going to gain them anything good, which is why I think a lot of these people have mental health problems.

You sound weirdly obsessed with ranking people's bereavement experiences.

Unconditional support for her has gone, it will make her life harder.

Presupposing she has that sort of mother. So much assumption and projection on this thread.

They are probably trying to relate and empathise, not one-up or minimise.

Others may feel differently, but I'd rather they expressed something even badly than nothing at all. At least doing it badly can be a start.

I really appreciated your post @TiredShadows and this but is spot on. I expect some of the communication difficulties are because some of us on this thread agree with that (expressing things badly is better than nothing) and some of us don’t (better to say nothing than to be an arse). I can’t argue that either side is right, because obviously it’s up to you how you feel about communication when you’re experiencing a loss.

@saraclara I quoted Miriam Webster in my post and told you what I think of the definition, and I feel the same way about the Cambridge definition. I mean, go for it - tell someone you can experience their exact feelings just by imagining it and see how that goes. I think a lot of people would look at someone who does this askance, but maybe I’m completely wrong. I would not keep a friend who did this repetitively. And in fact, I’m not talking to one right now, and I’m definitely not a “silent treatment” or “stonewall” person, they know exactly why we’re not talking, but my work in hospice showed me how unforgivable this kind of behavior is and we SHOULD shun it. Maybe that work made me hypersensitive to this behavior, I admit, because I saw it SO often.

In my world. I can’t imagine someone would say, “Oh I completely understand because I can imagine what that feels like,” to the victim of a crime? So… why death? Why is that the acceptable time to pretend you understand a pain you haven’t experienced? I mean, my grandmother taught me that was gauche AF, but I completely realize I may be very outdated! (I mean that seriously, not flippantly - my opinions may be VERY outdated because I also find it incredibly gauche when someone just leaves a comment on Facebook or Instagram saying “sorry 4 ur loss ♥️” and that’s the completion of their empathy/sympathy. Maybe others in this thread agree with me, but I also understand if they don’t).