Breaking the Silence: Learning to Talk About Death, Grief, and Loss

In our culture, death is the ultimate taboo. We forgive people who ask us impolite questions about our personal life or our finances. But we walk away quickly if they mention death. It is hard to believe this, given the violence in movies and television. But it is hard to see the permanence of death when we see the same actors in the next movie or television show. And we are not prepared when facing a friend who loses her husband. What do we say? How do we help?

David Kessler has years of working with people who struggle with grief, wrote the following in a October 2021 article in Quartz Magazine. “I have often been struck by just how ill-equipped most of us are when it comes to talking about death…Death is an unwanted part of life, but an outcome that every single one of us will have to face at some point. And yet we are often so uncomfortable with death’s inevitability that we find ways to avoid discussing it, or even thinking about it, until it becomes impossible to avoid—and then, having had so little practice, we often simply don’t know what to say.”

https://qz.com/2078527/the-high-costs-of-grief-illiteracy.