Empty Words

There is something in the human dialect that has become common. Our common reaction in most cases when supporting someone through loss, is opting for easy words which build greater distance. We easily and immediately communicate customery words such as 'be strong,''sorry' or 'may they rest in peace'. My friends mother passed away today, and there came pouring the sequence of familiar words. It is not only through my own experience of losing close relatives and a parent that I began to realise these words had absolutely no meaning and were just empty words. I was disconnected from especially words like 'be strong'. These words for me represent an easy way for the other to not take ownership in seeing the bereaved through a difficult process. Then there is the other counter to it, that these words have become so easy to say and are part of cultural traditions. The last thing, I want to hear is be strong or sorry and these hearing these words do not bring me closer to the other. It only reinforces that the other is not with me in my hour of need and will not be there emotionally to support me through my grieving journey. Rather what I hear is get on with it and cope. Then there is words like 'I understand I have also be through the same thing or I know what it feels like.' Really do you? Its all relational. My thoughts are no matter how common or similar our loss or tragedies, the experience for each and every individual is different. This includes loss in a family loss. Off course as a family its easier to lean on each other cause it's common ground to share similar memories and some of the grief. Now the experience of grief will differ. I am just wondering what this whole process of loss is all about. It still feels like its something that we the majority still experience in isolation, even within families. A person dies those closest carry on the griefing process. Friends and acquientences carry on with life. Then there is that push for the bereaved to go back to work. I once told my friend if I had my way; I would have gone back to work in my pj's and cried when I felt like it. In reality its not appropriate to display grief in workplaces, even beter yet we have become accustomed to not grieving in public. Dare I cry in public. For me keeping accoustomed to not crying in public is about the general public reaction ('it's ingrained to be abnormal'). If I could cry I would endlessly until I was done, but I do not want to hear someone say sorry or are you okay. My question is what are you sorry about, do you want me to stop crying so I can sympathise with you? These words are used too quickly and hold no meaning. I think what this all brings and exposes in me is anger. I want the freedom in expression and also to feel human connections which are not blocked by words. I am looking for human acceptance in grief as a process and not an immediate cure to what is socially acceptable. I am looking not to be classified in a box, of 'a nutter' just because I may have grieved longer than you or whats socially acceptable. No one is an expert in grief, its about developing a human connection to an unimaginable experience.