From the Last Psychiatrist Blog[1]:

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"TV taught you how to love, it showed you what love looks like, feels like. But when you're actually in love, it doesn't look like that, so you secretly suspect you don't have the capacity for love, that there's something wrong with you.

Same goes for sadness. And it's worse when you're in the presence of someone else's sadness, you have no idea what to do. All you really know about experiencing these emotions is the script you got from TV. "Oh your husband died!? Oh my God, that's terrible! I'm so sorry for you!!" But you don't feel any of that. Nothing.

So you think to yourself, what the hell is wrong with me? This woman's husband died-- sure, I can fake it, but am I such an empty monster that I feel nothing?

Of course you feel nothing. Why would you?-- it's not your loss. What's wrong isn't your lack of feeling, but that you think you have to feel something, that you have to tell this woman, remind this woman, how horrible is her loss. You think the only way to connect with people is to have their emotions. You think she wants to connect with _you_. You think she wants _your_ help.

The problem isn't your lack of feeling, it is that you think that unless you feel it's not real. You forget that she has a life that doesn't have you in it.

What you should say is, "I'm very sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do?" and that's it. But that feels insufficient. You think this because you think that there is something you can do, that the sadness is not real for you so it must not be real for her and you thus have the power to change it.

She's not looking for you to be sad, she's not looking to you for anything, her loss is bigger than you. If she needs anything from you, it's sympathy, not empathy.

But no one taught you this. So you fall back on the character "man helping grieving widow." Action!

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What's wrong isn't that you don't know what to say to save him, it's that you think there is something you can say which can save him.

I'm not suggesting you simply walk away and let him die, I'm suggesting that if your reason for not walking away is "society would judge /me/ if I walked away" then you're framing the situation in terms of you. And if your reason for staying is "maybe I can save him, I have to try", then you're framing the situation in terms of you. Only God can save him or bring his son back, you or I cannot, and he knows it - although we might not know it, and act as if we can.

Subconsciously framing it as if the most important part of this man's grief over his dead son is the part you play in it, and how it affects you, is screwy, and it's what we're all taught (by TV and media) to do.

What can you do instead? "I'm very sorry to hear that."; acknowledge to yourself that maybe his grief /is/ enough to justify suicide. Acknowledge to yourself that it /is/ a tragedy that cannot be fixed by the right words, if only you knew them. Release yourself from the bondage of having to save him, and from the responsibility of thinking you potentially can save him (and get the credit), and free yourself up to focus on him, listen to him, be there with him. Or to leave if you're only going to make it worse. Because if leaving helps him, but makes society think worse of you .. surely you can endure the hit to your ego to help a grieving man, right?

Maybe the best thing you can do is help him die with dignity and without pain, carry a message to someone for him. That's what people say they want from a true friend, isn't it? Someone to help bury the bodies, someone who can and will put a bullet in me to stop me suffering?

Or maybe the best thing you can do is let him know that you understand his suffering is bad and you would do those things for him.

By feeling like you are obliged to care, must interject, must save him against his wishes, must say the right thing, you dismiss his grief, disrespect his sadness, appear false, threaten to take away his control over his own life, and push him away. By accepting his grief, sympathising with it, supporting him, maybe you give him room to move.

And maybe he still dies. And maybe he has as good a reason as anyone for it.

And maybe he doesn't, because someone was there listening to how he hurt without trying to change it or fix it or trivialise it, or make it about them. Someone being there with him, while he suffered, without expecting anything more from him. Like a friend would.

[1] https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/01/can_narcissism_be_cu...