What to Say to a Grieving Mother

My eldest child died two years ago. He was 27.

I'm in a few online groups that deal with grieving for a child, grieving for an adult child, etc.

A recurring theme seems to be people responding inappropriately or in a way that's entirely lacking in compassion towards grieving mothers. And I get it: It's really really hard to be around someone in so much pain.

Here's the thing, though: For a grieving mother, that pain is now a permanent fixture in her life. There will never be a time when a grieving mother will say, "okay I'm finished grieving for my child" or, "I have finally healed from the loss of my child" or, "Andy is right. I'm glad it was that child that died, and not the successful/smart/attractive/sober/responsible/healthy child(ren)" or, "thank goodness my grief is finished...I was really worried about what everyone was thinking about me while that was going on" or, "I'm sure glad everyone who claimed to care about me has left me alone since my child died" or, "gosh, I guess Sally really does know how I feel because her parent/sibling/friend/spouse/pet/plant died last week" or any of the heartless, thoughtless, allegedly well-intentioned things people say to grieving mothers.

Women are the strongest, most resilient, compassionate, wise, and powerful people on the planet.

Mothers are all of that times a zillion.

GRIEVING mothers are all of that times infinity. But we are also terrified and lost and angry and suddenly very, very painfully aware of our mortality and of how raw human emotions can be.

If you have never lost a child, particularly a grown one, and you feel you simply must say something, please just offer your condolences and move on. There is nothing you can say, no matter how good your intentions.

A grieving mother will not hear your words of what you believe to be wisdom about grief based on your experience of losing literally anyone or anything other than a child.

A grieving mother does not agree that you know how she feels because of your losses, unless you have lost a child.

A grieving mother of an adult child does not agree that you know how she feels because of your loss of your very young child. She still feels your pain, and acknowledges it, and wishes she could take it away for you, but where you spent hours, days, weeks, months, or a few years raising that human, she spent decades...and maybe that human had humans of their own, which adds a whole other layer to all of it. She reached the point in her child's life where she could see her child learning from his or her mistakes and she got to see the promise of her child maybe choosing a different path the next time, and then never getting that chance.

A grieving mother does not want to hear that her child is at peace now, or in a better place, or watching over her.

A grieving mother does not want to hear if onlys and what ifs and should haves and could haves.

If you say, "I'm so sorry for your loss and I don't know what else to say", that's perfect for a grieving mother because there IS nothing you can say.

And for God's sake, if you have any humanity in you whatsoever, do not tell a grieving mother who still has living children, "well at least you've still got the other kids". The second she found out that her child had died, she became perpetually terrified for her other children. That, along with the grief, will never go away for her.

That grieving mother wakes up every morning thinking about her dead child. She goes about her day thinking a million times about her dead child. She goes to bed at night thinking about her dead child. If she's lucky, she has pleasant dreams about her dead child, but more often than not, the dreams are not pleasant, if she manages to sleep at all.

When you see a grieving mother smiling and laughing and having a good time and seeming to be very happy, don't assume her grief is over. Her grief will never be over. And even when she's smiling and laughing and having a good time, she's ALWAYS literally a millisecond away from her heart breaking all over again and her soul being crushed all over again, even if only for a few minutes.

If you know a grieving mother, you don't have to try to come up with something helpful or comforting to say. She would probably rather you didn't make that effort, because there is nothing helpful or comforting that you can possibly say.

If you know a grieving mother, and you care about her, just let her know that if she ever needs a safe place to vent, or a shoulder to cry on, she can turn to you and lean on you any time. But if you say that, make sure you mean it. Make sure she knows that her often almost unbearable pain is not inconvenient for you. Make sure you will show up for her, or don't say that you will in the first place.

And no, it's not the same for fathers, and it's not the same as any other kind of loss. The grief that fathers experience and the grief that everyone experiences losing loved ones is very real and very painful, and I'm not trying to discount it as anything other than that.

But it is not the same as a mother losing her child. It's not even close.

If you know a grieving mother, and you care enough not to further damage her already demolished heart, let her know that you care. Let her know that you're proud of how far she's come, whether it's been a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, or more since her child died.

Let her know that you see her, and you see that she's trying -- and succeeding -- to survive this horrible life sentence.

If you see her struggling with drinking, using drugs, suicide attempts, or any other kind of self-harm, do NOT tell her that her dead child would be disappointed or upset with her as a result. That will only make her feel worse. And she's not worried about impressing anyone. All she wants, besides her child to be alive, is to not be in this horrible pain for the rest of her life.

Give her time, because that's what it will take for her to realize that she can survive it. She'll always feel the pain, but she will survive it and learn to live with it. Hopefully.

If you know a grieving mother, and you care about her, think before you speak, or act. Think about how gutted you would be if one of the absolute most important people in your life was just suddenly dead. You will never know how a grieving mother feels unless you are one, but you can empathize.

That's what a grieving mother needs from you.

Empathy, not advice.

Condolences, not platitudes.

Support, not pity.

Reliability, not flip-flopping.

And the most important thing maybe that a grieving mother needs from you is understanding and patience.

She is broken, and some of her pieces went with her dead kid. She'll never be whole again.

She is confused. No one ever expects their child to die before them, and when it happens it's like a tsunami was unleashed inside of her heart and soul and mind.

Everything that made sense Before, doesn't anymore. Everything that seemed so very important Before, isn't anymore. If she's anything like me, most of the things she loved Before, she never wants to do or see or think of again because they might remind her of Before, when maybe she could have changed things before it was too late. You see, her job as a mother was to protect her child. And in her heart and mind, she failed. It doesn't matter how her child died, a grieving mother feels responsible.

And always remember, as inconvenient as you may find it to be around a grieving mother, it's infinitely worse for her and always will be, until the day she dies.

I didn't intend for this to be a novel, and there's a lot more that I could say, but really it should all just be common sense.

Unfortunately, from what I've experienced personally and have been seeing in these online groups, common sense is not even in the ballpark of common anymore.

And, as an aside, even speaking about being a grieving mother is agony. Writing this post has left me literally shivering and in tears, not because of any specific thoughts about my son or his death, but because of the thought that I would not have had to write this post -- I would not have had the right -- were I not a grieving mother.

#grievingmother #childloss #strongwomen #thestrongesthumans

RIP Jeremy Christopher Usher 11/20/1990 - 06/18/2018 ❤️