When you tell me “It was God’s plan”, “God needed him more”, “He’s in a better place”, “Heaven needed him”, or “Everything happens for a reason.”
You are minimizing my child’s life and death.
Stop saying these things to the bereaved. They aren’t helpful anecdotes. Your innocuous expression won’t fix it. You aren’t saving us from the trauma. You aren’t easing our pain.
What you are doing is spouting off the first thing you can think of. It doesn’t mean much of anything, it’s just what you’ve heard and seen said so you throw it out there because spending any length of time actually considering what we’re going through would mean uncomfortableness for you and you don’t want that. You only want to watch from your perch on the sidelines and offer hollow, suppressive, surface level reproductions of toxic positivity.
The truth is, death sucks. There isn’t some grand scheme or explanation that makes it okay. It isn’t some lining up of divinity. It is dark, it is painful, it is real, and it just- happens. We don’t need you to coddle or placate. Saying “I’m so sorry” or even… and let me blow your mind with this… saying nothing- is better than the aforementioned cliches.
