Why We Get Grief So Wrong — And What Can Help

Trigger warning: This article discusses death, parental loss, and emotional distress. Please check in with yourself before continuing.

The Problem: Our Collective Discomfort with Grief

Despite how universal loss is, grief remains a taboo.

Most people don’t know what to say. Others say too much.
And many stay silent out of fear of doing it wrong.

But silence can be just as painful.

As Irvin D. Yalom reminds us in Staring at the Sun, our fear of death — our own and others' — shapes more of our lives than we care to admit:

“The denial of death, more than anything else, is what keeps us from living.”
— Irvin D. Yalom

What Not to Do (Based on Research)

Well-intentioned but harmful responses to grief include:Well-intentioned but harmful responses to grief often include:

• Offering clichés like “everything happens for a reason”
• Trying to cheer someone up instead of validating their pain
• Avoiding them altogether because “they need space”

A 2020 meta-review published in Death Studies found that the most meaningful support for grieving individuals often comes from non-professionals — friends, peers, colleagues — when they are emotionally present and non-judgmental.

What Does Help: Presence - Learning to Sit with the Unbearable

n Staring at the Sun, Yalom writes about our collective fear of death — not just our own, but of losing those we love. He explains that much of our anxiety, our busyness, even our denial, stems from the fact that we live in a death-denying culture.

So when death does enter the room — through illness, loss, or silence — we find ourselves without a map.

Yalom doesn’t offer false comfort. Instead, he invites us to face mortality with honesty:

“Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.”

What does this mean when we're sitting beside someone grieving?

It means we don’t have to distract, fix, or pretend everything will be okay.
We can simply be there — fully present, heart open, not looking away.
We can learn to hold space, even in the most tender, wordless moments.

And sometimes, that’s exactly what someone needs: not advice, not solutions, just quiet, steady presence.

Small things matter:

• Saying “I don’t know what to say, but I’m here with you”
• Sitting in silence without trying to fix
• Bringing soup, folding laundry, being consistent
• Allowing the grieving person to talk about their loss — even months or years later

Why This Isn’t Just Theory for Me

My earliest memory of death was in my grandmother’s house.
A man who had worked for the family — and had no one else — died there.
I remember his body lying in the living room, surrounded by people praying.

It felt sacred. Quiet. Weighty.
Like the room itself knew something bigger had happened.

Later, I witnessed losses that still feel too painful to speak of — including the death of a child.
What stayed with me wasn’t just the grief of that moment, but how it broke the living.
Some parents never stood up again, not really. It was as if they followed their child underground, in spirit if not in body.

When my mum died, I couldn’t accept it.
I cried every night for a year. Eventually, I developed chest pain — fluid began to form around my heart. The diagnosis was pericarditis, but it felt like something deeper.
Like grief had seeped into my body.

That was the moment I realised: if I didn’t find a way to live again, I might not survive.
My son was two. He needed me.
So I decided — not because the pain had lessened, but because I knew I had to choose life.

In recent years, I’ve lost three dear friends.
And now, the grief feels different — more like numbness.
Like the wind took them too fast, too suddenly, and left only a strange silence behind.
A silence that speaks, if you listen closely, in the language of sadness.

The Video Everyone Should See

There’s a reason this video went viral. It shows something so simple yet radical:
You don’t need to be wise, trained, or healed to help someone in pain. You just need to stay.

Final Reflection: Death as a Mirror to Life

Martin Heidegger once wrote that only by confronting our mortality can we begin to live authentically.

He called this Being-toward-death (Sein-zum-Tode) — not a morbid obsession, but a deep awareness that life is finite, fragile, and impossibly precious. Being is time, and time is finite.

“As soon as man comes to life, he is at once old enough to die.”
— Heidegger, Being and Time

As Simon Critchley (2009) interpreted:

“For human beings, time comes to an end with our death. Therefore, if we want to understand what it means to be an authentic human being, then it is essential that we constantly project our lives onto the horizon of our death.”

This isn’t meant to depress us.
It’s meant to wake us up.

When someone we love dies — or when we sit with someone in their grief — we’re standing at the edge of that reality.

And in that moment, all the small talk falls away.
All the cleverness, all the distractions.

What’s left is something raw, real, and human: presence, connection, meaning.

Grief, then, becomes a teacher.
It strips away what doesn’t matter.
It calls us to live with intention.
To love more deeply.
To waste less time.

And when we show up for someone in their grief — not to fix, not to force healing, but to simply be —
we honour not only their loss, but their life.
And what it means to be alive.