The advice given for in-person good friends how they can support a grieving person by offering "what would you like me to do for you", is useful. What the friend might be asked to do, may not be interesting or anything intellectual/verbal, but to simply assist the person in a normal daily activity or activity that assists the grieving person in slowly re-establishing a different life..without the departed loved one.

The most helpful people to me so far, are my partner and long-term, close friends who have already lost a close family member and have had either reasonably healthy family relationships with the person who died or enough years in the past, when their family deaths happened. They have given to me useful, heart-felt responses and listening ear(s).

What I have sensed is people who have never lost a family member nor close friend, and have not yet dealt with death, they don't know what to say. And for a suicide, they really don't know what to say..not even "you must miss your sister". Which puzzles me abit because I know these people have siblings(!).

Ah. Life is so short, it is really a dream at times. When I think back to this summer after a great trip in Europe, then seeing all my family, including sis in Toronto...it is like a dream.