Help please with an email to bereaved mum

[WreckOfTheHesperus]

A colleague of mine in a different country lost her 2 year old to meningitis last year. She has recently come back to work. I don't know her very well, and we tend to just e-mail a couple of times a year. I see her once a year when I visit her office. She knows that I have a same-age DD.

She has sent me a work e-mail for the first time since coming back; I don't know how to respond. Do I just answer it, or do I say something about her DS?

Any help appreciated; I have thought about her a lot since this terrible thing happened.

Please acknowledge her loss - saying nothing is far more hurtful, no matter how clumsy you feel in saying something.

A simple 'I am so sorry about the loss of . I hope you are doing as ok as possible and if I can do anything to help out, just shout.

About the thing about work blah blah blah....'

If she replies in kind and enters into it more, then perhaps you could say that you cannot immagine it, and that you will hold your own dd closer tonight. If she says no more about it, then take it that she needs to keepa work head on and follow her lead I guess.

I think the main thing is to use the dd's name, and to acknowledge her death. Simple and honest.
Poor poor woman.

Thanks folks. Does this work?

"It?s good to hear from you and see that you?re back in the office. I just wanted to say that I was so terribly sorry to hear about DS name; I have thought about you often over the past year and I hope that you?re bearing up as well as you can."

I hope you dont' take this the wrong way, but 'bearing up as well as you can' sounds very stiff upper lip and a bit cold. Can you put more of you into the email instead of being formal and saying what you think you 'should' say? So, 'I can't imagine how dreadful a year you must have had, but I wanted you to know I have thought of you often and have been trying to send some strength your way.'

IME it is the people who genuinely speak as themselves that help, not those stock 'sorry for your loss' phrases. Then leave the response to the work email to a different message afterwards.

Thanks for your help, folks. I did go with the wording above (MissM, perhaps I am always little bit formal - this is not out of line with how I speak!), and got a very nice email in return thanking me for my kind words and mixing this with the work question, so am relieved that I appear to have done the right thing.

Well done you.

Yes, well done. She will really really appreciate it - you probably won't know how much.