If you know someone who is grieving a recent death, this post is for you. If you are the person in grief whose loved one died, copy the link to this post and send it to your trusted people. I created this list of the top things to do for someone who is grieving based on my own experiences after my mom died, and I hope it helps you, too.

1. Don’t wound with words.

Don’t say I’m sorry. When my mom died, countless people on social media and in real life said I’m so sorry. It quickly became annoying and frustrating. ‘I’m sorry’ requires me to respond, because when someone expresses a feeling, especially saying they are in a state of feeling bad about something, it’s human nature to want to help. But right after learning my mom was dead, I didn’t have the energy or the brain cells or the desire to respond to dozens of people saying they were sorry. You think YOU are sorry? I’m the one with the dead mom. Sorry isn’t going to bring her back. Sorry isn’t going to make me feel any better. Save I’m sorry for actual apologies. I don’t mean to sound harsh. But also, I’m not sorry.

Don’t say they’re in a better place now. Don’t say the good thing is they’re not in pain anymore. While these things may be true on some level, I never wanted my mother to be in pain, and I never hoped for her to die to end the pain she felt. This kind of statement puts the griever in an uncomfortable and painful position of agreeing with you to maintain politeness, as if even though we are hurting possibly more than we ever have in our lives, these statements require a response that asks us to be grateful for our parent’s death. Just don’t do this.

Don’t say at least they had a long life. It doesn’t matter if your parent died when you were 21 or 61, we are still human and losing a parent can be earth shattering no matter your age. Just because we may have had more time with our mom or dad or that they had more time to live longer, it doesn’t mean that somehow it hurts less. This is another one of those forced gratitude statements. Those experiencing grief are made so uncomfortable by well meaning people who unconsciously try to push them into positivity. They do this because saying these things makes THEM feel more comfortable. They want the bad feelings to go away. They want to fix it. But deep, raw grief is not fixed with simple platitudes and a push to be positive. You will end up doing more damage if you open your mouth and those phrases come out.

2. Say their name.

I can’t tell you how many times I see news of a death on social media and scroll through the comments to the bottom, most of which are platitudes and emptiness, lots of I’m so sorry and sending of condolences.

The best comments are the ones in which friends and loved ones offer a brief memory or a specific comment about the deceased person. What would you rather hear? Fifty people typing nothing but I’m so sorry or the one who says something like “I always loved coming to your house after school when we were kids. Your mom was so nice to me and always made the best snacks!”

Obviously the specific comment wins by far. It evokes a memory of a happy time and clearly shows how the mom who died had an impact on the author, so much that they remember her kindness into adulthood. It will help your grieving friend so much to know that others remember, appreciate, or love the deceased person.

I could sense people tiptoeing around me after my mother’s funeral, hesitant to say anything that might upset me. While that’s understandable, even though a story might have made me cry, the people who said my mom’s name and talked about her life helped the most and kept me upright and breathing during a time when my default was horizontal and sobbing.

So say their name. Recount memories. Tell the stories. These things keep them alive and keep their lost person a little closer to the land of the living. It helps them to not feel irrevocably gone.

3. Just do it.

Don’t ask what the grieving person needs. Just do it. Take action. Do tasks.

Grieving people stop seeing what needs to be done. They are living behind the grief membrane, and the world looks completely different to them.

This is a great time for you to step in and help. You can help keep the house running. Do the simple repetitive chores.

Help with pets. Water the garden. Take out the trash. Drive their child to a practice or play date or bring them home from school.

These small tasks might seem easy to you, but they can feel insurmountable or might be invisible to someone in deep grief.

4. Keep them fed.

There were many times that my mom simply sat and stared at her husband’s usual spot on the sofa after he died of a sudden heart attack. She couldn’t fathom living and she wasn’t eating.

I started by putting a simple cup of tea in her hand. Often I would walk by and see the cup still full, cold and forgotten on the side table. Occasionally, there was half a cup of cold tea. Nevertheless, whether she took one sip or finished it, I persisted and kept putting the mug in her hand.

She didn’t want to eat meals either, and so often I would set down near her a small plate with one slice of peanut butter toast. It was the simplest way I could think of that she would accept to get nutrients in.

Bring the food. Put the plate or cup directly into their hands. Drinks with a lid and a straw work best, because a straw requires less effort than lifting and sipping from a glass. This may sound silly or trivial to you, but if you have ever been the one grieving, you’ll know how much effort even drinking water can be.

Another great way to help feed your loved one who is grieving is to fill their fridge or pantry or freezer with easy options. Little to no preparation required food that they can grab with one hand and eat with minimal effort involved is ideal.

You can also bring supplies. Paper plates and plasticware make eating easier when your mind can’t handle being back in the world, especially if your grieving friend is a parent with kids to feed. You can bring small gifts of coffee, tea, or good chocolate. Have groceries delivered.

Sometimes in grief, it doesn’t even occur to people to feed themselves. Nourishment is the last thing on their mind when they are aching inside. The pain of grief turns off hunger cues.

5. Take the kids out.

My kids were seven and nine years old when my mom died. At the time I was still married and was fortunate that my kids could stay with their dad and grandparents while I flew to New York to plan the funeral and settle dozens of details.

I was responsible for so much and yet I was numb to the world. I had to figure out how to bury my mom during a time when I often had to remind myself to breathe, and while my children are my two favorite people on the planet, it lifted so much pressure off me knowing they were cared for when I left to endure some of the hardest days of my life.

My children stayed at their grandmother‘s house in Florida. She sent pictures so I could see that my kids were safe and loved in my absence. She took my daughter shopping for three new dresses, one of which she wore to the funeral. They made homemade Pad Thai together and went out for the most enormous ice cream cones (with sprinkles!)

Partly it gutted me that their living grandmother got to pour love and affection and gifts on my children because I needed to be away to bury their dead grandmother. It felt like my mom was missing out, and it hurt to think she’d never get to take them for ice cream again. So many life events will happen that she will miss. But mostly I was grateful that my kids had people who loved them and still had grandparents who cared.

The kids eventually flew to New York for the funeral. I had to be a mom even while grieving the loss of my own mother. Nothing felt more hopeless than realizing I was a motherless mother.

I had to be there for my children. I couldn’t check out and slip fully into grief. I was reminded of when I was in labor with my first baby and shouted, terrified “I can’t do this!” My midwife looked at me calmly and said firmly, “But you are doing it. You’re already doing it.”

It was the same while momming through grief, thinking I can’t do this.

There have been countless times on my parenting journey when I’ve said I can’t do this. Yet almost always as moms, as parents, we have to do it. We have no choice. Our infant has a stuffy nose and isn’t sleeping. We stay awake. We keep going. We endure sickness, sleepless nights, pain, and other hardships and sacrifices because we’re parents first.

It’s the same with grief—even though the death of our own parent can bring indescribable pain that we think we can’t handle along with being a mom to small humans who need us, somehow we do it.

We may not always do it well, but we do it. We show up.

And yet momming while grieving takes its toll, so if you are a friend or loved one of the person in grief, take their kids out. Even for an hour.

Do happy things. Go to the playground where the kids can shout and run and be happy. Let them burn off energy at the beach. Buy the big ice cream cone.

Taking care of the kids is an act of love and care for the adult who is grieving while parenting.

6. Don’t forget the encore.

It’s a beautiful thing watching family, friends, and loved ones activate and come out of the woodwork when someone dies. People dress up and show up. There is brunch. Stories are told. Tears are shed while looking at old photos. It’s almost like a holiday. A mini-break together. The funeral is the main event, and the subsequent days following the funeral and burial are the encore performance, specifically one that should not be missed.

Do your part to make sure the encore happens. Don’t leave your grieving friend alone to manage life by themselves immediately after the funeral. There is such a buzz of activity on the day of the funeral, but afterward that rush of events and action quickly ends, like a sailboat that can no longer move forward when the wind dies. Without support your grieving friend might not even be able to remain afloat when the main event ends, let alone move forward.

When my mom‘s husband died, I visited her two weeks after his funeral. I timed my visit this way on purpose. I had a choice between being there for his funeral or being there after. I specifically chose to show up after the funeral.

A surge of family, friends, and loved ones showed up to the funeral and the brunch buffet that followed. The week or so surrounding his death brought an influx of sympathy, cards, and phone calls. It was a whirlwind of activity. By two weeks after the funeral, people more or less retreated back to their normal lives. It felt like the right time for me to show up in my mom‘s life as a support person.

When the world had quieted down and the first wave of condolences and support subsided, my mom was still nearly paralyzed with grief. Her house felt desolate and too quiet. She couldn’t go back to anything close to a normal life.

My mom‘s funeral was the first time many of us had been together in several years. My brother and I planned an informal gathering the day before the funeral that we ended up calling a celebration of life. A celebration.

It genuinely made me sick to my stomach to call this gathering a celebration, as if we were partying when my mom was dead. Yet it felt right to celebrate her, to remember her, and to make the gathering for her as our person who lived, rather than focusing on her death. As small groups chattered, laughed, and occasionally cried while laughing, I tried to imagine my mom was there in the house, just off in another room.

The day after the funeral, everyone went home. They took off their dressy clothes. They went back to their lives. The party was over, and I was left with a grief that would never die and a long list of logistical tasks still to do. The rooms where we gathered were empty, filled only with the echoes of conversations and the memory of a roomful of supportive people.

Other people were able to go back to their lives. The world also wanted me to resume living, but my mind and heart remained with the dead. I needed more time. I wasn’t ready to resume without my mother.

I remember all too well watching her sit with tea gone cold and uneaten toast, watching where her husband used to sit, sitting still but reeling inside. I felt that happening to me. I kept looking for her to come back, to walk in the door from work or grocery shopping—to make life feel real again.

Don’t forget your friends who lost a parent after the funeral. Your life continues, but they are often stuck on a treadmill of grief and can’t get off. Keep texting them. Show up emotionally and physically if you can.

Despite not having visited in several years and rarely talking, my old college roommate showed up for me. She made an effort to reach out and connect. She did the work so all I had to do was reply when I could. She didn’t have expectations. She simply sent support and love consistently.

It sounds simple or small, but her friendship and outreach meant so much to me. In a fast paced world where people mainly care about themselves, it felt good and safe to have someone stay with me even if it was just texting back and forth, when most people attended my mom’s death like it was a one-time event.

If you are the friend, be a follow up rock star. Develop a realistic follow up strategy, and stick with it. If you are the one who lost your parent, you might just be surprised who shows up for you, who stays, and who doesn’t.

7. Mark your calendar.

If your friend’s mom or dad died, put their parent’s birthday and their death anniversary in your calendar with a recurring reminder each year. Your friend will feel the emptiness heavily on these days, even years later. Send a card, a text message, or an email on these remembrance days. Call them and say you remembered it was their parent’s day and you were thinking of them. These special days are harder for someone grieving a loss if they think they are the only ones who remember and care.

My mom met her best friend Jeri in high school, and despite eventually living in different states, they remained friends in close contact up until my mom’s death. As a child I knew my mom’s best friend as my “Aunt” and genuinely didn’t know she wasn’t my aunt by blood (and that her children weren’t my real cousins) until I was much older. She was found family and loved as such.

My Aunt Jer sends me a birthday card on my mom’s birthday every year. She emails or sends a letter on her death anniversary, usually with a story about seeing a rainbow on her morning walk.

(On August 1, 2018, I was with my ex-husband and his family in Florida. Just before sunset, we saw the most unusual rainbow in the sky–wide and flat, perfectly straight, not a curve in sight. Everyone commented they had never seen one like it. A few hours later, my brother called and said our mom had died. I don’t think I’ve shared this detail with Aunt Jer, but she keeps seeing rainbows and says it’s my mom sending love.)

Aunt Jer considers my mom her sister and she hasn’t forgotten her. Her regular contact helps me keep on living a life without my mom in it, because I know she was loved by people other than just me. She is remembered. She is missed. She existed. Mine is not the only heart responsible for holding onto her. I have help, and it’s like oxygen some days.

8. Listen.

People experiencing raw grief might need to ramble. Be there to truly listen.

Let them talk.

Don’t interrupt.

Don’t try to fix it.

Listen to their stories. Let them repeat themselves and don’t bring to their attention that you’ve heard this story before.

Be there while they wallow and wail. Be a witness to their tears. Let them sob.

Stay through their silence, while they try to catch their breath in a world where they can’t breathe.

Wait patiently and quietly when they can’t think of what to say because the feelings are too massive to squeeze down into words.

Let them know you will listen when they are ready to talk. Show them your friendship is not fragile and you will not be scared off.

9. Get them out.

If someone you care about loses their mom or dad, when you feel the time is right, get them to leave their house. Find easy nature that doesn’t require effort. Go somewhere you can see the sky or the water. Bonus points if you can hear birds chirping. (I learned in this podcast about simple changes to improve your life that the sound of birds chirping is proven through evidence based research to boost your mood for several hours!)

Take your friend to wander through a museum if they are up for it. Go to the movies (keep it lighthearted!). Visit a new coffee shop. Order for them if they aren’t ready for decisions.

Go for a walk in the city. Take an easy hike in the country. Don’t make this strenuous, unless your friend is athletic and being active would help. The idea here is to plan easy outings and get out of the house, where grief often stagnates.

Try to create a low key, low effort change of scenery for your friend who is living behind the grief membrane. You’re trying to shake up the thought pattern grief can cause—making us feel that this new, overwhelming grief is the new normal, that every day will be painful, and everything makes us sad.

While a short walk or a latte won’t fix grief or make your friend happy, occasional jolts to the grief pattern through a change of scenery will whisper to their brain and heart that there is more to life and that there is goodness out there for them even while grief happens.

10. Read the room.

If someone you care about loses their mom or dad, it’s wonderful that you want to help, but please be subtle about it. Now is not the time to be dramatic or to make this about you.

You are the backstage crew. You are helping from the shadows, like a grief support ninja. You’re not here for thanks or pats on the back.

You are the small gift that shows up at just the right moment. You are the doer of tasks that need to be done, and you do them before your grieving friend has time to stress about it.

You are the strong but silent fairy godmother. You are the hands on the wheel.

But before you swoop in with takeout and tissues, you must first read the room. 

Some people will accept help and seamlessly roll with it. Others won’t want their agency taken away and will bristle at help. They might perceive it as interference. They might be embarrassed to open their home or their grieving heart. Some people need to grieve in private.

It’s critical you assess the situation and understand how your person operates so that you do what’s best for them. Before you take any of these ideas and put plans in motion, please remember to read the room.

11. One more thing.

Even though I just told you not to expect thanks, I’ll say it here. (Just don’t expect to hear it from your grieving friend!)

Thank you. You’re doing a wonderful thing.

I often hear people say they’re glad they were able to hold someone’s hand or be with them at the end so that they didn’t die alone. But I don’t hear much talk about this kind of ongoing support for grieving a death.

A profound loss like the death of a parent, spouse, or child can make us feel every day, for many days, like we, too, are dying alone. Except we die over and over, and sometimes it never ends. Thank you for choosing to hold someone’s hand while this happens.

Thank you for reminding someone to keep living while they grieve.

Thank you for showing them that they are not alone.

Thank you for making someone’s life in grief feel a little less like death.