Death is confronting. It’s scary. It’s still taboo in many cultures. That’s why people use euphemisms. We fear death, and the pain and loss it causes to the living and the dead. Our cultures all have death rituals and rules about showing respect for corpses. It is part ignorance, part respect for the spiritual.

Euphemisms for death might shit you, especially when you are in pain. It’s hard to be generous and tolerant of others’ failings when you are suffering.

People using euphemisms are avoiding dealing with the reality of death: that’s probably because we are deeply uncertain of what is the right thing to do. There is no one right way: what comforts one person irritates another. It’s a deeply difficult thing, and has been that way for a very long time.

I’m a member of a Facebook group dedicated to my high school’s deceased alumni. A woman I went to school with from K-12 had died and as she was only 25 or so, several folks were asking what happened. Her cousin answered, “The Lord saw fit to take her.” WTF? That’s not an answer. 25 yr old women don’t just get “taken by the Lord,” they die in accidents or of illnesses with names. GRRR!

My Mum’s violent death a few years ago was my first (and still only) experience of a loved one’s death and I loathed all the “passed away” euphemisms but felt so guilty about it. That I wasn’t doing death right or something.

I reached breaking point after a week of seething over insipid remarks and fumed at my sister-in-law (the worst and repeated offender despite my other sisters’ requests for her not to speak for us):

“My Mum hasn’t gone or passed away. Mum was killed, Mum died horribly and it wasn’t her fucking time to go so stop smothering us with your shitty platitudes.”

And that’s what it felt like, that our raging, noisy, heartfelt, violent grief was being smothered and silenced. That the way we needed to respond to such a horrible, gruesome and sudden death was somehow inappropriate, disproportionate, improper. Instead we needed to box our grief up all neatly and quietly, tied in a bow marked “Mum passed away” and present ourselves meekly, passively for the comfort of others.

@JDR, PhDork and mischiefmanager: I kinda like lost too but the direct “I lost my xyz” (particularly about a parent) triggers irreverent Oscar Wilde associations so I can’t say this without feeling slightly ridiculous/false.

I do talk about Mum’s death as a loss though. Just not that I “lost” her. I think of Mum, her touch, her hugs, her smell, her smile, her scowl, her words, her wit, her voice, as being “lost to me”. Which does all kinda make it about me JDR but that is valid and real because death is also experienced by the living.

But what actually happened to Mum? Mum didn’t get lost. Mum didn’t pass on or pass or go away. Mum died. Mum is dead.

But I think you’re right that the monosyllables and hard D sounds do make it seem harsher than the longer, softer -ss sounds.

And Dorkie, you’re right. It’s equally important to let the mourner know that if and when s/he wants to talk, you’re available to listen. You still have to be careful to avoid hurtful cliches, though. It’s never okay to say, for instance, “It’s better this way.”