Start with the reassurance, because it is the reason most people are reading this. The wrong words are survivable. Silence is what people remember.
Ask anyone a year after their mother or father died which friends were good to them, and they will not describe eloquence. They will describe who wrote, who came by, who kept saying the name out loud, and who crossed the road rather than have the conversation. Clumsy and present beats polished and absent, every time.
So the goal is not to find the perfect sentence. The goal is to say something, then keep saying it.
The short version
Say plainly that you heard. Use the parent’s name. Say one specific thing, either about them or about your friend. Offer something you have already decided to do. Then say it again in six weeks.
I heard about your mom, Rachel, and I am so sorry. I keep thinking about her at your wedding, telling everyone within reach how the cake had been made. I am going to call on Sunday. You do not have to pick up.
If you want more than that, the rest of this page goes into it properly.
What actually helps
Say something within the first few days
Not because there is a deadline, but because the first week is when people find out who has noticed. A four-line text sent on the day is worth more than a beautiful letter you are still drafting in your head three weeks later. You can send both.
Use the parent’s name
Say your mom, and better still say Margaret. Almost everyone who has lost a parent describes the same strange thing happening within two weeks. People stop saying the name. It starts to feel as though the person is being politely edited out of every conversation, at exactly the moment their child most wants to hear about them.
You will not upset anyone by saying it. You may be the first person that week who did.
Say one specific thing you noticed
General praise slides off. A detail sticks. He was a lovely man is warm and weightless. He was the only person who ever wrote to me after my interview, and he mailed it, he did not email is a small piece of the man handed back.
If you never met the parent, be specific about your friend instead. What she was like on the drive home from a visit. How he cleared his calendar every February to be there. What she said the last time you asked how her mother was doing.
Ask a question they can actually answer
How are you? is nearly unanswerable in week one. It asks a person to summarize something with no shape yet, usually while standing in a corridor.
Narrow it. How was the week? Are you sleeping at all? Is anyone feeding you? What is the paperwork like? These can be answered in a sentence, or waved away, and either is fine.
Later, the best question of all is one nobody thinks to ask. What was she like? Then stop talking.
Let the silence sit
If your friend goes quiet, or cries, the instinct is to fill the gap. Resist it. Almost nothing needs to be said next. Sitting beside somebody without commentary is a skill, and rarer than you would think.
Follow their lead on tone
Some people want to be somber, some want to talk about the funeral admin, and some want to laugh about their father’s appalling driving. All three are grief. If they crack a joke about the parking at the crematorium, laugh. They are showing you how they want this handled.
Say the awkward thing out loud
If you genuinely do not know what to say, that sentence is allowed. I have no idea what to say to you and I did not want that to stop me writing. It is honest, and it puts you in the room.
What tends to land badly, and why
None of these are unforgivable. Most are said with real kindness. It is worth knowing what they do on the way in.
Anything beginning “at least”
At least she had a good long life. At least he went quickly. At least you got to say goodbye.
Each one arrives as a small correction, as though the listener has got the sums wrong and needs the balance explained. Age does not scale grief down. A woman of ninety-one is still somebody’s mother, and her child is still, on some level, a child.
“He is in a better place”
Wonderful if your friend believes it. If they do not, it closes the conversation and quietly implies they should be less upset. Only say it if you are confident it is shared.
“I know exactly how you feel”
Meant as company, often heard as competition, and sometimes it is followed by ten minutes about your own father, which leaves your friend nodding sympathetically at your loss. Say I have some idea instead, keep it to a sentence, and hand the conversation straight back.
“Let me know if you need anything”
The kindest useless sentence in the language. It asks a person with no spare capacity to identify a need, choose a helper, and then ask a favor. Nobody does it.
Replace it with something already decided. I am bringing dinner over on Thursday. I will take the boys on Saturday. I am free all Wednesday for the bank and the county office if you want a second person in the room.
“Sorry for your loss”
Not offensive. Just worn smooth from use, and it can sound like something said at a counter. It costs nothing to say I am so sorry about your dad instead, which sounds like a person rather than a form.
“You seem to be doing so well”
Usually meant as praise. Often heard as a warning that the performance is working and must continue. Try you do not have to be all right with me instead.
“Stay strong”
Especially be strong for your mother, or for the children. It hands somebody a job at the precise moment they have no staff.
Advice about grief
Counseling, medication, exercise, a trip away, a book that helped you. If it is asked for, give it. If it is not, hold it. Advice implies the grieving is being done incorrectly and could be improved with better technique.
What to say in the first few days
Short is right. In person, at the door, or in the line at the funeral, nobody can absorb much.
I am so sorry about your dad. I am not going to ask you how you are, because I imagine you have answered that forty times today.
I heard about your mother. I loved her. I am here whenever you want me and entirely fine if you do not.
I do not know what to say. I just did not want to say nothing.
You do not have to talk to me. I am going to stand here and hold your drink while other people talk to you.
Whatever the next few weeks look like, I am in them. You will get sick of me.
By text, the same, with one addition that matters more than it looks. Tell them no reply is needed.
Thinking about you today and about your mom. No need to reply to this or to anything I send for the next month.
I am so sorry about your father. I will check in again next week. Ignore me freely.
What to say weeks later, when everyone else has stopped
This is the part almost nobody gets right, and it is where the friendship is actually made.
Condolences arrive in a flood for about ten days, then stop almost overnight. The funeral is done, the visitors go home, the casseroles run out, and everybody returns to their own lives. Meanwhile the person who lost their parent is only just coming out of the administrative fog and beginning to understand what has happened. Month two and month three are frequently worse than week one, and far lonelier, because by then asking for attention feels like an imposition.
So the single most useful thing you can do is put a note in your calendar. Six weeks. Three months. Six months. The birthday. The first Christmas. The anniversary. Then send something on each of them.
It is six weeks now, which I think is about when everyone else goes quiet. I have not. How are you doing, properly?
I was thinking about your mom this morning, no particular reason. That song was on in the car. I hope today is a bearable one.
It would have been your dad’s birthday today. I remember him telling me he refused to celebrate it after seventy. Thinking of you.
First Christmas without her. I am not going to pretend it will be lovely. I am around all week if you want company or a reason to leave the house.
A year today. I remember. Say the word and I will come over, or I will leave you completely alone, whichever is more useful.
I found a photo of your dad at the fun run and I have printed it for you. It is in the mail. Nothing needed from you.
People often worry that mentioning it will reopen something. It does not work that way. The date is already circled in their head. Being the one person who also remembered is close to the best thing you can do for a friend in the second year.
What to say if you did not know their parent
You are not disqualified. You simply write about the living person instead of the one who died.
I never met your mother, but I have known you for nine years and I have heard about her most weeks. The sewing, the driving, the phone call at seven on the dot. She sounds like somebody worth missing.
I did not know your dad, so I will not pretend I did. What I do know is that you have driven to Cleveland every other weekend for two years, and I have watched what that cost you. I am so sorry.
I only met your father once, at your fortieth, and he spent most of it telling me about your work. He was hard to interrupt on the subject. I am so sorry he is gone.
You can also ask. Weeks later, when things are quieter, I never got to meet him, what was he like? is a genuine gift. Very few people are ever invited to describe their father to somebody who wants the long answer.
When the relationship was complicated
Not every parent was kind, and not every death is a straightforward sadness. Some people lose a parent they had not spoken to in years, or one who hurt them, and then find themselves grieving anyway, which is confusing and hard to explain to anyone.
The mistake is to guess in either direction. Do not eulogize a man your friend was estranged from, and do not assume relief either.
Say something that leaves room.
I know it was complicated between you and your mother. That probably makes this harder rather than easier. I am here for whatever version of it you are actually having.
I am not sure what you are feeling about your father, and I am not going to guess. I am around if you want to talk about any of it.
Grieving somebody who was difficult is its own thing, and I think a lonelier one. No expectations from me.
Then take whatever they tell you at face value, including anger, including nothing at all.
What to do instead of saying anything
Most of the real comfort in the first months is practical, and none of it requires the right words.
Bring food that needs no plate, no thanks, and no conversation, and leave it on the step. Take the trash out. Do a grocery run and put it away. Answer the door for a morning and field the neighbors. Sit in the car while they deal with the death certificate. Drive them, because grief and driving do not mix as well as people assume.
Handle work quietly, if you are a colleague, so nobody has to explain themselves. Offer to take the children for a full day, not an hour, and take them somewhere loud. Sort out the paperwork, if you are good at paperwork, because there is a startling amount of it and it arrives while nobody can think straight.
Later, be the one who still says the name. Ask about her. Tell the story about him you have told before. Send the photograph you found.
And go on inviting them to things long after they start saying no. Being asked matters even when the answer is no. Being dropped from the list is what stings.
If you are the one grieving
People will say clumsy things to you for months. Most of them are frightened rather than careless, and the awkward sentence is usually somebody trying to get near you without the equipment.
You are allowed to tell them what you want. I would rather talk about her than not. Please do not ask how I am in front of the team. What helps is company, not advice. Most people are relieved to be told, because they have been guessing.
And you are allowed to want nothing from anybody for a while. That is not ingratitude.
The thing worth remembering
Nobody has been given the words for this, which is why everybody is so afraid of them. What people remember is not the sentence. It is who kept showing up in month four.
If you are writing something down rather than saying it, there is more on what to write in a sympathy card, with a long run of examples by relationship.