Please help me support my friend who has just lost her dad.

[DorrisMcWhirter]

My friend has just called and her Dad passed away this morning after a very nasty illness.

She lives away from home but is obviously staying with her mum during this time.

Her Mum has lots of friends who support them by cooking / cleaning / ironing / dog walking etc so these areas are well and truly covered.

My question is, how could I help my friend other than just offering to be at the end of a phone whenever she needs me? This just seems so useless. I can be with her within 10 minutes if she needs me, but with 2 young Dc's in tow, this isn't always relaxing.

Any ideas would be really welcome!

Send cards, be there at the funeral (sounds obvious but means so much) send flowers when she is home from the funeral. Send her a text message everyday to say hi, thinking of you. Offers are good but sometimes you need to be more direct as she won't always know what she wants and she won't feel like picking up the phone to ask for something. does she have children? Take them off her hands for a while to give her some space.
OJ posted a good list of things, I will try to find it.
Cry with her, laugh with her, just be with her. Talk about normal stuff if she wants, listen to her talk about the hard stuff if she wants.
You sound like a lovely friend btw.

from OJ

Thank you cathcat, that's a really helpful set of ideas and I'll look at OJ's post too so thanks for the link.
The text a day idea is especially great, I think she'd really appreciate that.
Poor girl sounds so muted, I suppose she must still be quite shocked even though it ws expected

Phone, text, call round, email...don't wait for her to phone you thinking it might be a bad time, because she may not want to burden you - I know I didn't take up the offers of 'I'm here if you need me' when my dad died.

When you see her alway ask how she is. Whatever you do don't avoid the subject because you think it might upset her - the most upsetting thing for me has been when people pretend it hasn't happened.

You sound like a lovely friend.