The prevailing advice for friends who want to support others in times of loss (or new baby, or after surgery, or during other tumultuous life events) is that you should offer something specific, rather than saying something generic like, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

In fact, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do” seems frequently vilified as actively non-helpful. And I get that. I certainly don’t want to ask my friend who is grieving/recovering/etc. to take on the additional work of assigning me a job to do. It’s just that sometimes, a person really DOES want to help, and yet doesn’t have the full picture of what “help” might look like. 

When dear family friends of ours lost their mother, I tried to do the specificity thing. I said, “I am happy to come do laundry, drive kids to appointments or activities, pick up groceries, make meals – whatever you need.” Okay, I suppose that is still a little broad. 

I did check in with my friends every day for several weeks, and am trying to continue to purposefully reach out because I know they are still grieving. That feels doable but also like not enough. 

Another close friend – K – recently lost a family member – a person I’ve never met. She asked if I could sit at the house for a few hours to accept food and flowers. I did not know this was a role people needed to fill, but I am so glad she reached out and I’m so glad I am able to do something to help. 

K noted that she felt lucky to have a friend she could ask to take on this task. That sounds self-aggrandizing, but I’m not trying to toot my own miniature horn here – her point was that it feels important to have people in your life that you can count on for that kind of thing, that you know you could ask to do your laundry or buy you groceries or sit in your house and accept food and flowers. She said this experience of dealing with death has sharpened her sense of urgency around cultivating close connections with people. 

I take her point. If I contemplate a situation where I needed someone to drive me to chemotherapy every week or couldn’t get out of bed and required someone to do laundry or drive Carla to and from school or any of the ten thousand mundane things necessary even during times of crisis, I do think I have a few people I could call on, without embarrassment, without feeling as though I were overstepping the boundaries of our relationships. Do you have people like that? It’s a small group, for sure, but I’m grateful it exists. (Unfortunately, two of these members of my support system live several states away which makes it much more difficult. When they’ve lost loved ones, it has been so hard to know what to do and how to support them from afar. In one case, I was able to fly to my friend’s house for the funeral; in another case, I was not able to leave Carla and it wouldn’t have been feasible/appropriate to take her.)

The thing is, when I think about DOING supportive things for other people, the circle enlarges quite a bit. The neighbors in our old neighborhood, who were so kind to Carla when we lived there, and with whom I still exchange texts and holiday cards, and occasional visits: I would be happy to do any of those things and more for any of them. My neighbors here, whom I know less well, but with whom I feel like relationships are blossoming? Same. Any of the women I volunteer with. Any of the other parents of Carla’s classmates. Any of my blog friends. (Although again, there’s the distance issue at play with many of us.) A person in my outer circle had surgery a few years ago, and called me crying because she wasn’t able to lift her mattress enough to make her bed, so I went over and made her bed for her. It was such a small thing, but it took only a few minutes out of my day, and it helped her, and it felt so good to be useful.

Because I know that I am a perfectly ordinary person, I am going to assume that most of us feel that way. That if help were needed, and we were available, we would step in. That’s comforting, and I hope when I do need help, I remember that. 

I also hope I remember that “please let me know if there’s anything I can do” comes from a genuine desire to do something, anything in support. That it isn’t a meaningless platitude, but a sincere wish to know what I need. 

That said, it would sure be nice to have a manual of all the things that are DEFINITELY NEEDED during times of life upheaval or crisis or transition. I’d even settle for a list of what to do in times of bereavement, because all of us will encounter loss both at home and in our communities.  

My first instinct is always to make food. When a neighbor’s spouse died several years ago, I made a big pot of stew and a batch of cookies, packaged it all up with some disposable napkins, plates, and cutlery, and walked it down to her house. That felt like Doing Something. I hoped that even if she couldn’t eat the stew/cookies for whatever reason, she could share it with visitors, or at the very very least would take it as a token of my sympathy.

But food is just one thing that’s universally needed! There have to be others, right? If there is a need for someone to sit at a house and accept food and flowers, there are certainly other roles that need filling. Collecting flowers and food from the funeral home after a wake? Making a post-funeral meal for people to come home to? Taking all the funeral clothing to the dry cleaner? Caring for pets? Watering plants? Running the vacuum around the house and cleaning the bathrooms? I don’t even know. 

If you have lost someone (and if so, my heart is with you), what did you find most helpful from those around you? Or what did you most need during that time? If you’ve been the helper, what have you done to offer support? 

Part of MY problem is that I get too much in my own head about stuff. I feel a little reluctant to say, “I will do X” when I don’t know if X is needed, or if X is something my friend might prefer to do herself (making her own dinner might feel like an injection of normalcy; she might think giving me her laundry is too intimate a task), or if X infringes on her privacy or personal space (I’m happy to pick up groceries, but maybe she doesn’t want me poking around in her fridge or pantry to put things away). 

People are so gracious and so unwilling to inconvenience others, but I think most of us want to HELP, and don’t see helping as an inconvenience. If only we knew what to DO.

I’m not sure how to end this post or if it even makes sense (I was up until three last night and that is the third night in the past five days that I’ve been involuntarily awake in the three o’clock hour, so let’s blame any issues on this post on THAT), but I would be interested in your thoughts.