Having worked in the memorial industry for many years, I’ve generally found that what people want to know most after losing someone is that you are grieving the loss also. Not that you have found the perfect words. Not that you can somehow make sense of what happened. Not even that you know exactly how they feel. They want to know that the person they loved mattered to you too. That is why platitudes, however well intended, so often fall short. “Sorry for your loss,” “thinking of you,” “they’re in a better place” — there is nothing inherently wrong with those words, but they rarely have much altitude or depth. They acknowledge the loss without necessarily acknowledging the person. After expressing your own sadness, I think one of the most meaningful things you can offer is a shared memory. Tell the family something you remember. Tell them who that person was to you. Tell them what made them funny, difficult, generous, stubborn, kind, brilliant, ridiculous or unforgettable. Tell them something they may already know, or better still, something they may never have known at all. Express an understanding of who the person was and, in your own small way, what the world has lost by losing them. But more importantly, bring them back to life for a moment in memory. That, to me, is where real comfort often lives. Not in pretending the loss is somehow okay, but in proving that the life existed beyond the walls of one family. That other people saw them. Knew them. Remember things about them. Because grief is painful enough without the fear that someone might slowly disappear from the world as well. Sometimes the greatest thing you can give someone who is grieving is the reassurance that the person they loved was known and will be remembered.