I lost my father three years ago on a Thursday afternoon in November. In the weeks that followed I received probably two hundred messages. Condolence cards, texts, emails, comments on a post my brother made. I read every single one of them.
Most of them said roughly the same things. Thinking of you. So sorry for your loss. He was a wonderful man. They were all kind. Most of them felt like they came from the same place, a genuine but somewhat generic compassion that was hard to hold onto.
A small handful of them I still think about. Those were the ones where the person said something specific. Something about him. Something that told me they had actually thought about who he was rather than just that he was gone.
Say something about the person who died
This is the single most meaningful thing you can do in a condolence message. Reference the parent specifically. A memory you have of them. Something they said once that stayed with you. The way they made you feel when you were around them. What they meant to your friend beyond just being their parent.
The fear is always that bringing up specific memories will make the grieving person cry or feel worse. In reality, the opposite is true. Grief is not made worse by hearing someone's name or having their memory honored. What makes grief lonelier is the sense that the world has already moved on and forgotten who the person was.
When you name something specific about who they were, you tell your friend that their parent existed in the world beyond just their relationship with them. That other people carry something of them too. That is a profound comfort in grief.
If you did not know the parent personally
You can still be specific even if you never met them. "Everything you've told me about your mom over the years has made me feel like I knew her a little. She sounds like she was remarkable." This tells your friend that the stories they shared about their parent mattered. That you were listening. That the parent existed for you even at a distance.
Do not rush toward comfort
The impulse is to say something that makes the grief feel more manageable. To offer perspective or hope or silver linings. In the early days of losing a parent, none of that lands the way you intend it to.
What lands is acknowledgment. "This is an enormous loss and I'm so sorry you are going through it" is more useful than "at least you had so many good years together." One sits with the person in the truth of what they are experiencing. The other asks them to feel grateful in a moment when they are not capable of it yet.
Reach out again after the first week
The loss of a parent does not get easier after the funeral. In some ways it gets harder once the immediate rituals are over and the reality of the permanent absence settles in. Checking in three weeks, six weeks, three months after the loss tells your friend that you have not forgotten and that the grief has a witness beyond the first rush of condolences.
When the words are hard to find
Condolence messages are among the hardest things to write. The stakes feel high and the fear of saying something wrong keeps many people silent when their friend most needs to hear from them. unsaidit helps you write something that is specific to the person who died and the relationship you have with the grieving person, so the message feels genuine rather than like something you found on a sympathy card.