Excellent post and a good reminder for me. Especially this:
"I'm all about fixing things or at least figuring out what needs fixing, and I feel horribly helpless and useless just listening to someone in pain without offering them any kind of solution to their problem. But often the listening is exactly, and only, what people need."
In (small) defense of those people who say ghastly things at funerals, it could just be that they don't know what they're saying. It's such a horrible loss, that sometimes the brain goes dead and the mouth goes on automatic pilot. You feel a need to fill the silence because silences are awkward, and out comes idiocy. I've been guilty of it (not at funerals, I hope!).
At funerals the only thing I mention are funny, kind, or positive memories about the person who died and that I'll miss them. Then I *try* to shut up.
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"I'm all about fixing things or at least figuring out what needs fixing, and I feel horribly helpless and useless just listening to someone in pain without offering them any kind of solution to their problem. But often the listening is exactly, and only, what people need."
In (small) defense of those people who say ghastly things at funerals, it could just be that they don't know what they're saying. It's such a horrible loss, that sometimes the brain goes dead and the mouth goes on automatic pilot. You feel a need to fill the silence because silences are awkward, and out comes idiocy. I've been guilty of it (not at funerals, I hope!).
At funerals the only thing I mention are funny, kind, or positive memories about the person who died and that I'll miss them. Then I *try* to shut up.