The phrase ‘sorry for your loss” is annoying and generic to me, and don’t get me wrong I do use it myself, but that’s because we as humans have that phrase imprinted in our minds. Let’s be honest there are two main  reasons we even use that phrase. The first reason is we really don’t know what to say and saying “sorry for your loss” is the universal thing to say. The other reason, which is a bit dark, you truly don’t care and you know the nicest thing to say in that moment is “sorry for your loss”. I think I’m a combination of the two and that latter scares the crap out of me.

Before I go into the fact that my thoughts and the way I feel sometimes scare the living crap out of me, let me start with the first reason. I’m king of not knowing what to say in so many situations, and it’s sad that in a moment where I can help someone I’m speechless. Like that compassionate part in me wants to have that word that would spark up someone and just put a smile on their face in a difficult time. I can suggest the fact that I’m an over thinker that’s why I don’t have anything to say, because I have a million things to say. The problem with this though is with a million things to say, why can’t I say something? 

So which brings up another thought, and that is what is blocking my mind from processing the thought into words? I don’t want to keep falling back on “sorry for your loss” because I’m stumbling over to form a thoughtful and positive sentence at that moment. 

It’s the pattern of the phrase that is a bit annoying to me, because even to this day when I mention my mother passed away when I was twelve I still hear “sorry for your loss” or “ sorry to hear that” . Now in the moment the person can be compassionate and really mean it, or they can care less fall back on the cliche, and you will never know which of the two it is. The phrase gives you room to falsify compassion, because someone going through the pain of loss will take any form of compassion in their time of pain without reading into where it’s coming from.

Now that brings me to the second reason for the phrase, and that is some people don’t care. Part of me feels this way when it comes to death or lost, and  it’s not like I choose to be this way it’s just how my mind reacts to hearing of death or someone’s loss. For me I feel the pain the person is feeling and try to be connected with that to show compassion for what is going on, but lost in what to say. So here we are back at that programmed phrase we repeat in that moment “sorry for your loss”. So me saying that to someone is hard for me because it’s truly not honest. I’m not sorry for  your loss because death is coming for all of us, but I am sorry for how this loss is making you feel.

Now I’m not a monster, or anything like that I feel the pain of loss. Just the last time I felt that pain was when my mother passed when I was twelve, and that’s a tale for another time. What I now understand from that loss is that it made me numb to the pain of death, and I had to figure out to get attached to the emotion a person feels for death that I can’t feel so that I can focus on being a shoulder for that person to cry on.

To be honest I don’t know where I was going with this, but it was a random thought I had and continues to come up a lot lately. My growth process and forcing me to be me and not hold back anymore. Maybe this piece is the beginning to that transformation that needs to take place in my life. Only thing I can do is put the work out and hope the reader doesn’t think I’m some type of psychopath.