People ask: “How did he die?” but what if we changed it up a little…

We talk so much about how someone died, but so little about how they lived. The world seems obsessed with the ending — the final moments, the timeline, the details that don’t actually bring comfort. The ending isn’t the part that matters most. The middle is. The messy, funny, ordinary, beautiful middle where their life actually happened.

We live in a world obsessed with the details — “How did it happen?” “How long ago?” “Were you there?” “I am sorry for your loss” (ahh, that’s an almost instant response).

I” think people mean well — I really do believe that most people are inherently good, well‑meaning individuals.”

Being asked over and over about our loved one’s death doesn’t change the ending. It doesn’t offer comfort or solace.

In fact, I feel it does the opposite — it’s like re‑living one of the worst moments in our lives, over and over. It doesn’t change the ending, it doesn’t make them any more alive — or dead. It can just feel like you are stuck — reliving, rethinking, re‑sharing your pain.

What if we were to all change it up a bit and ask:

What is their name?

What is your favourite memory of them?

What was their favourite song?

Their favourite colour?

What was their laugh like?

This is the way to help a grieving person- (yes, they may get a little teary — but learning how to be comfortable around grieving people is a whole different blog post).

What you will do is help keep their person alive — you see, talking about our loved one’s favourite things, the things we adored about the people who have died, is like giving the grieving person the most beautiful little gift.

“They get to share their person with the world one more time.”

They get to visit the good times — remembering a meal, a joke, that thing that used to drive them crazy (the thing they would do anything to have drive them crazy one more time). A memory they perhaps haven’t visited in a while. This is what helps.

You want to talk about the middle parts of their story — how you met, their bad driving, their silly walk, anything in the middle — because that is where the life is. That is the part worth reliving.

That is the part that matters the most.

If we all asked about the middle — not the sad part at the end — I think that is truly showing interest, truly saying “I see you.”

Not just your sadness — that’s the yucky part, the part that hurts.

“I see how much you loved them.”

I see how much they meant to you.

I see how lucky you were.

That is how we help our grieving people — by remembering. They live in our memories, in our stories, and when we ask about the story, we give that love a chance to be shared, to be felt, and to be seen.

I think that’s all we can hope for in the face of loss. We won’t get our happy ending — the worst has happened — but a chance to share the good parts? That’s a detail worth sharing.