GOOD ADVICE: To Show Compassion to the Living, Go to Wakes and Funerals.

Because here’s a fact about mourning — when someone close to you dies, even if it’s expected, it’s like a bomb has gone off. And you and your family are wandering around in the rubble, shivering in the wind. You don’t know what day it is, and you keep forgetting why you went into a room. Eyeglasses are lost and appointments forgotten as you try to deal with the fact that this person who was so essential is somehow, incredibly no longer on this Earth. This fact keeps hitting you, like the shock waves after an explosion. As Emily Dickinson wrote, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes / The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs …”

At this time, the visits and calls from friends are like the pieces of a quilt. And the quilt pieces come together into a blanket and warm you, getting you through this time of shock and sorrow. It doesn’t matter if all they say is “I’m sorry.” They don’t have to stay long. They don’t have to be clever. The thought really is enough. It’s enough that they’re there in the stuffy funeral parlor, or at the luncheon, looking at pictures of your mom and nodding as you babble, “Wasn’t she pretty? Wasn’t she fun?”

Fewer people are going to memorial services these days, according to surveys by the National Funeral Directors Association. In 2013, 10.3% of respondents had not gone to a funeral in the last five years. In 2019, almost 37% had not gone to any memorial service in five years.

This isn’t a good trend. So take my parents’ advice and send a card, make a call or, better yet, go to the wake or the funeral. You’ll probably feel a little awkward, and get bad coffee. But what you’ll give to a grieving family is priceless.

True.