You're standing in a grocery store aisle, staring at your phone. Someone just texted you that Dave's wife died. Or your coworker's mother. Or your college roommate's kid. And now you're standing between the cereal and the pasta sauce, thumbs hovering over a tiny keyboard, trying to figure out what to say when someone dies. You type something. Delete it. Type something else. Delete that too. The cursor blinks at you. You put the phone in your pocket and finish shopping, telling yourself you'll figure it out later.

Later turns into tomorrow. Tomorrow turns into next week. And by then the silence has calcified into something that feels impossible to break.

I've done this. You've probably done this. Almost everyone I've talked to about grief has a version of this exact story. The words aren't the hard part -- the fear of getting them wrong is.

Why saying nothing feels safer (and why it isn't)

The instinct to stay quiet comes from a decent place. You don't want to intrude. You don't want to make it worse. You're afraid you'll say the wrong thing and add pain to someone who already has more than they can carry.

But here's what the bereaved will tell you, almost universally: they remember who showed up, and they remember who disappeared.

Not showing up is a message too. It just says: your loss made me uncomfortable, and my comfort mattered more than your pain. That's not what you mean. But it's what lands.

Megan Devine, a grief counselor and author of It's OK That You're Not OK, puts it bluntly: the grieving person is not helped by your silence. They're not protected by it. They're just more alone. Your clumsy, imperfect, slightly awkward text message -- the one you deleted three times -- would have meant more than the nothing you sent instead.

Imperfect is always better than unsent.

What to say when someone dies

So what do you actually say? Not the theoretical, greeting-card version. The real one. The one you can type with your thumbs or write in a card or say out loud in the hallway at work.

Say it directly. Don't dance around what happened. "I heard that Michael died, and I'm so sorry" is better than "I heard about your loss" because the second one sounds like you're afraid to name it. You're not afraid. You just haven't done it yet.

Say their name. This matters more than you think. The bereaved person is terrified that the world is going to move on and forget that their person existed. When you say "I've been thinking about James" instead of "I've been thinking about you," you're telling them: he was real, he mattered, I haven't forgotten him.

Share one specific thing. Not a eulogy. One thing. "I keep thinking about the time Rob showed up to the neighborhood cookout with that ridiculous hat and made everyone laugh for an hour." A specific memory tells the grieving person that their loved one left a mark on someone else's life too. That's not a small gift.

If you didn't know the person who died, be honest about it. "I didn't know your mother well, but I know she raised someone remarkable, and I'm sorry you're going through this." You don't need a personal anecdote. You need sincerity.

Here's what this looks like in practice:

A text: "I just heard about Anna. I'm so sorry. I keep thinking about the time she brought those lemon bars to the school fundraiser and they were gone in ten minutes. She was one of a kind. I'm here if you need anything, but I also won't be offended if you don't want to talk."

A card: "There's nothing I can say that's big enough for this. I loved the way David told a story -- he could make a trip to the hardware store sound like an adventure. I'm thinking about you and I'll check in next week."

The best messages share a formula that isn't really a formula: acknowledge the death directly, say the person's name, offer something specific, and leave the door open without demanding they walk through it.

What not to say (and what the bereaved actually hear)

Nobody says these things to be cruel. They say them because they're panicking. But it helps to know how they land on the other side.

"They're in a better place." What the bereaved hears: your loved one's death is a good thing. Even if the person was religious, this phrase minimizes the loss. Their better place was here, with me.

"At least they're not suffering anymore." The bereaved hears: you should feel relieved. Maybe they will feel relieved, eventually, in their own time. But that's theirs to arrive at, not yours to assign.

"I know how you feel." No, you don't. Even if you've lost someone too, grief is so specific to the relationship that no two versions are the same. Swap this for: "I won't pretend to know what this feels like, but I care about you and I'm here."

"Everything happens for a reason." The bereaved hears: your loved one's death serves some higher purpose that should comfort you. It does not comfort them. It makes them want to scream.

"Stay strong." What this really says: please don't fall apart in front of me. The grieving person doesn't need to be strong. They need permission to not be.

"Let me know if you need anything." This one sounds generous, but it puts the burden on the person who's drowning. They will not call you. They don't have the energy to figure out what they need, let alone ask for it. Replace it with a specific offer: "I'm dropping off dinner Thursday. Any allergies?"

The theme here isn't that these phrases make you a bad person. It's that grief doesn't need explanations, silver linings, or assignments. It needs witnesses.

When the death is sudden versus expected

A death everyone saw coming and a death nobody did are two different kinds of earthquake. The aftershocks hit differently.

When someone dies after a long illness, the bereaved may have been grieving for months already. They might feel relief, and then feel guilty about the relief. They might feel emptied out, like the death was anticlimactic after all that waiting. Don't tell them they had time to prepare -- the preparation never actually prepares you, it just exhausts you.

If you're supporting someone whose family member was in hospice, understanding the strange, layered exhaustion of anticipatory grief helps you show up better.

When a death is sudden -- an accident, a heart attack, a stroke -- the bereaved is in shock. Their brain can't process the gap between Tuesday, when everything was normal, and Wednesday, when everything was destroyed. Your job in the first days is not to make sense of it. It's to be a steady presence in a world that just lost its floor.

When the death involves suicide or overdose, there's an added layer of stigma that isolates the bereaved even further. People tiptoe. They whisper. They ask questions. Don't ask how the person died. If the bereaved wants you to know, they'll tell you. In the meantime, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has specific guidance on supporting survivors of suicide loss, and it's worth reading before you reach out.

The one thing that's true across all of these: say something. How the person died changes what you're walking into, but not whether you should show up.

Words of condolence when you barely knew the person

Your coworker's parent dies. Your neighbor's spouse. The parent of a kid in your child's class. You didn't have a relationship with the person who died, and you barely have one with the person grieving. But you still want to acknowledge it.

This is where people overthink it the most and where the simplest messages work the best.

"I was sorry to hear about your mother. I can't imagine what you're going through right now." That's it. You don't need to say more. You don't need to pretend you're closer than you are.

For a workplace condolence, keep it brief and warm: "I'm so sorry about your dad. Take all the time you need. We've got things covered here." That last sentence -- we've got things covered -- is one of the most practical and comforting things a coworker can hear.

If you want to find the right words for someone who's still alive and facing the worst, our guide on encouraging words when someone is dying covers that specific terrain.

The point is: a short, honest message from an acquaintance means more than you'd guess. You're not overstepping. You're being decent. The bar is lower than you think.

Showing up after the funeral

Here's the part most people miss: the first two weeks are not the hardest. The first two weeks are a blur. People bring food, send flowers, call. The house is full.

Then everyone goes back to their lives. And the bereaved person wakes up on a random Tuesday in the empty house and the real grief arrives.

Three weeks out. Three months out. The first birthday, the first anniversary, the first Thanksgiving with an empty chair. These are the moments that break people, and these are the moments when almost nobody shows up.

Be the person who does. Mark the dates in your calendar. Send a text that says: "Hey -- I know today would have been Claire's birthday. I've been thinking about her. And you." That message, arriving on a day when most people have forgotten, is worth more than every casserole delivered in the first week combined.

Say the name on a random Wednesday. "I drove past that restaurant where Tom used to take everyone for his birthday and it made me think of him." The bereaved person wants to know that the world hasn't just moved on. That someone besides them still remembers. Your unprompted mention of their name proves it.

The Dougy Center, a national grief center with decades of bereavement research, emphasizes that ongoing support -- not just crisis-phase support -- is what helps people build a life around their loss. The data matches what the bereaved already know: grief is not a two-week event.

When the grieving person is you

Maybe you didn't come here to find words for someone else. Maybe someone you love just died and you're trying to figure out how to survive the conversations.

If that's you: you don't owe anyone a performance. "I'm not ready to talk about it" is a complete sentence. So is "Thank you" followed by silence. So is walking out of the room.

You're allowed to tell people what you need. "Please don't say it was God's plan." "Please don't compare your dog dying to this." "Please just sit with me and don't try to fix it." The people who love you will hear those instructions as a gift, not a rejection.

And if you've been carrying a message for the person you lost -- something you didn't get to say -- writing it down can help more than you'd expect. Not because they'll read it. Because you will.

Grief strips everything back to what actually matters. It shows you, with terrible clarity, what you wish you'd said while you still had the chance.

If losing someone has shown you that -- if you know now what you would've given to say one more thing -- don't let that lesson expire. Write those words now, for the people who are still here. Not a eulogy. Not a speech. Just the honest stuff you'd want them to carry if you were the one who was gone tomorrow.

When I Die Files is a quiet place to do exactly that. No deadline, no pressure. Just a place where the words that matter most can live until they're needed.