Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

As some know, and as others have pieced together, we’ve had a death in the family. On July 15th, my brother shot and killed himself. He was 53 years old.

What followed that event was a very emotional and trying few weeks. The family has had to deal with many issues, official as well as personal. Aside from the shock, anger, frustration, and knife-edged grief, we’ve also had to handle the myriad requirements of police, medical examiners, lawyers, funeral directors, newspapers, social media, and professional organizations. We’ve also been trying to hold each other together, comfort one another, and to keep ourselves from falling into the same black hole of depression that my brother fought for so many years.

It hasn’t been easy.

It hasn’t been easy because life doesn’t stop when someone dies. While I was dealing with this tragedy, I’ve also had to deal with the ongoing hack-attacks on my email accounts, replacing a broken water heater, hack-attacks on my wife’s email accounts (yes, both of us), as well as trying to cobble together some sort of celebration for our 37th wedding anniversary (it was . . . subdued).

On top of all this, of course, were the condolences. Emails, texts, phone calls, bouquets, plants, letters . . . we all got our share, coming in from extended family, personal friends, and friends and colleagues of my brother. Most of them, and I mean like 95% of them, were heartfelt sympathies and loving offers of support. People shared stories of my brother, of how respected he was, how funny he was, and they volunteered everything from prayers and (virtual) hugs to offers to do chores and run errands for us. It touched us, made us feel less alone though walled off by grief, and helped us cope.

The other 5%, however, surprised us all, because damn, some folks really do not know how to do this. Like, at all.

All of us are surrounded by the concentric circles of our many relationships, each circle with its own degree of intimacy and familiarity. The innermost circle holds those who are most dear to us—often immediate family, spouses, partners—while outside that is a circle of close friends, then one of old friends, then colleagues and casual friends, et cetera. Death, when it comes, strikes the center hardest; it hits everyone in every circle, to be sure, but the severity of the blow diminishes as you travel outward from the epicenter.

Comfort and condolence, therefore, should flow inward, toward those most affected by the loss. Comfort and condolence should not be expected to flow outward. Most people understand this instinctively. Some, I have learned, do not.

Pro tip #1: If, in contacting a member of that inmost circle, you have to introduce yourself and explain your relationship to the deceased, you are definitely not a member. This does not mean your grief is not real. This does not mean that you aren’t absolutely gutted by the loss. It does mean that the person you’re talking to is most likely feeling everything you are feeling but at an order of magnitude higher, and thus is in greater need of condolence and support than you are.

Pro tip #2: When contacting the innermost circle, it is prudent to exercise a little discretion and decorum. Those hardest hit by the death are going to be low on energy, resilience, patience, compassion, and nearly everything else it takes to function in society. Being overly familiar, leaving messages that end with phrases like “We have to talk,” or insisting on your preferred method of contact rather than that of the family member you’re hell-bent on talking to, these are not going to endear you to anyone involved.

Pro tip #3: If you’re still not sure if you’re in the innermost circle or not, here’s a major clue. If you’re not dealing with any of the professionals mentioned above, if you’re not dealing with the estate, if you’re not helping clean out closets and storage rooms and desk drawers and shelves of memorabilia, you’re not.

As you might guess from my tone, there were a couple of people with whom I was very, very angry. I mean, having to run interference for my sister-in-law because someone she didn’t know was leaving her cryptic voicemails was bad enough. Spending forty minutes on the phone with someone I’ve never heard of (much less met), telling them that I understood their pain, offering words of comfort to them, consoling them through an incoherent effusion of grief, well, that burned through every last nanogram of composure and patience I possessed. Having to be strong for someone who knew my brother for a few years, when I changed his damned diapers and made up bedtime stories for him, well, let’s just say I think I racked up some karma points for good behavior. Because even I, with my long sibling history, even I know that I am not in the innermost circle. That circle belongs to my brother’s daughter and her mother.

Thankfully, that anger was short-lived. I know these people are grieving, as I am, and I know they weren’t malicious with their demands for my time, my attention, my words of comfort, my promise to impart their requests to the rest of the family. However, working on the assumption that their behavior isn’t unique, I decided to post this, as a little Condolence PSA.

The more you know.

k