Advice on how to help DD friend

[Sritila]

DDs friends mother died suddenly last week. Beyond DD14 staying in touch and dropping a meal and gift basket for the friend into the house is there anything else you would advice us to do.

She is coming over for pizza with a couple of pals but I don’t know what else we should do. She’s a relatively recent friend and the girl is just lovely, it’s tragic

Oh the poor girl, how very sad. What you're doing sounds fine for the immediate time - maybe find out about the funeral and whether she would maybe like you and your DD to attend (even if you didn't know her mother well) so she has a friend there and someone to be with at the reception/ wake part?

I think the really, really important thing is not what you do now, but to continue to be a good friend to her in the months and years to come. The thing about something sudden and tragic like this happening is that the family are overwhelmed by support and love in the immediate aftermath, but then quite naturally people move on and go on with their own lives, and the bereaved are left to get on with it, at a time when carrying on as you were feels most impossible. As a bereaved person you're often still not a very good friend or fun company many months after a big loss and the very best friends are the ones that persist in being there for you for the long haul, checking in, encouraging you to join in gentle activities, listening to you talk even if it's boring or repetitive, it's not that people expect you to be over it as such but if you're not immediately in their faces, or if you are but are being a bit difficult to deal with they can kind of back away and it can lead to a real feeling of isolation and loneliness. Obviously your DD is very young herself and maybe this is too much to put on her but it would be really kind in her to make that additional effort longer term with this friend.

What the previous respondent wrote.

I would also talk to her about Winstons Wish; she may well want to contact them at some point. A link to them is here

https://winstonswish.org/