How to be there for people who are grieving

A guide to what should be the proper social etiquette when meeting people in grief.

My first encounter with grief, as I remember it, crossed my path through my mother. Her forlorn expression spoke in volumes even to my young mind of a six-year-old. She had lost her partner in life, and I, my father. Obviously, I was too young to recognise, much less understand, the gravity of grief that had stricken us. More than my father’s absence or the void that was about to manifest for the rest of my life, it was her haunting silence and firm grasp as she clutched me by her side that I remembered about losing a parent.