I love a good casserole. Casseroles equal love. My mother's tuna casserole is still one of my very favorite things to eat in the entire world. But I want you to notice why we reach for it. We drop the dish at the door, say a quick awkward thing, and get the hell out of there as fast as we can. The person we came to comfort is left holding a warm dish in an empty doorway, feeling more alone than before we rang the bell.
This episode is for everybody standing around the person who is dying or grieving: the friend, the neighbor, the coworker who hears the news and freezes because they have no idea what to say. If that's ever been you (it has been me), I want to take away the thing that keeps you frozen and give you something to do with your hands and your heart instead.
The casserole was not the problem. The fleeing is.
We reach for the casserole because standing in front of someone's grief with empty hands and no plan feels unbearable. A dish says: I cared, I came, here's the proof. That impulse is good and human. But sometimes we do things to avoid the being. The hard part is sitting with someone's pain and not being able to fix it, so the casserole becomes a way to deliver our love from a safe distance and flee.
You do not need the right words to show up
The fleeing comes from one belief: that we need the right words. Since we can't find them (and we've searched our whole vocabulary, plus ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and maybe Siri), a lot of us do the worst thing possible, which is nothing. We tell ourselves we're giving them space when we're really protecting ourselves from our own discomfort.
The people I've watched get hurt in grief were almost never hurt by someone saying the wrong thing. They were hurt by the silence, by the friends who vanished and the people who crossed the street. Grieving people will tell you years later exactly who disappeared on them. So hear me. The wrong thing said by someone who showed up is worth a hundred times more than the perfect thing you never said because you stayed home.
There are no magic words, and grief is not a problem to fix
There is no sentence that fixes grief. The wisest person who ever lived could not say the thing that makes a widow stop missing her husband. You haven't been failing to find it. It isn't there to find. Once you take that in, you can stop rehearsing speeches in the car. Grief is the price of having loved someone. You're not there to fix it. You're there to be with them in it, and company is something you've known how to give since you were a kid.
Things we say that try to shrink grief
Most of the things that land wrong try to make the grief smaller. At least you had those years together. My favorite, everything happens for a reason. They come from a good place, but each one quietly tells the grieving person their pain is a little too big. Their grief is exactly as big as the love was.
The most common one is "Let me know if there's anything you need." We mean it, and it does almost nothing. It hands the job back to the person with no capacity. Someone drowning in grief cannot inventory their needs, pick one you might meet, and work up the nerve to call you.
What to say and do instead
Start with the simplest sentence: "I don't know what to say, but I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere." That honesty is a gift. Then say the person's name, and tell a story about them. We're afraid of reminding people of their loss, as if they'd forgotten. They haven't. Hearing the name tells them their person still exists in the memories of the people who love them.
Then do one specific thing. "I'm bringing Thursday dinner. I'll text when it's on the porch at six. You don't have to open the door." Take the kids to the park so they can lie down. Mow the lawn without mentioning it (I've done this for neighbors). A specific, done thing asks nothing of them and lifts something off them.
Show up after everyone else leaves
The casseroles and cards come in the first week. The world shows up for about ten days, then goes back to its life, and that's exactly when grief gets heaviest. So mark your calendar. Reach out at one month, at three months, on a random Tuesday, on birthdays and anniversaries. "I'm thinking about you today" is enough. If you were the one who disappeared, be gentle with yourself. A late text is still a text.
A line I keep in my back pocket
When I'm hugging someone close to me and I don't know what to say, I whisper in their ear (not creepy, I promise), "Pretend I said something that helped." The people who know me understand it's my way of saying I'm here. I get a little giggle, and from there we can move into "tell me a story about them," where I say their name.
In this episode
- 00:00 Why we reach for the casserole
- 02:00 The fleeing is the real problem
- 03:30 The belief that we need the right words
- 04:00 What actually hurts people in grief
- 05:00 There are no magic words
- 06:30 Things we say that try to shrink grief
- 08:00 Why "let me know if you need anything" does nothing
- 08:30 "I don't know what to say" as a gift
- 09:30 Say their name. Tell a story.
- 10:30 Do one specific thing
- 11:30 The week everyone leaves
- 14:00 Be gentle with yourself
- 14:30 Bonus tip
Caring for someone near the end? You don't have to figure out the last days alone. Book a Guided Care Planning Call and we'll talk through what's ahead.
Feeling the pull to do this work? Pay attention to that. I teach it at Compass Doula Academy.
Listen: Spotify · Apple Podcasts · 15 minutes
If there's anything else you're dying to ask, let me know: christy@christybraun.com
