The Healing Journey

July 15, 2026

Sorry for Your Loss

By Maire Ullrich

If one more person says “sorry for your loss,” I think I’m going to scream.

The bank manager says it. The cable company representative says it—right before telling me I can’t change the name on the account because of some policy that sounds like no customer has ever died and left a loved one to deal with the paperwork. Every stranger I am forced to inform, in the middle of some mundane transaction, that my husband died. Very unexpectedly. That’s why I don’t have the password. That’s why I don’t know his PIN. That’s why I’m standing here, doing this, without him.

“Sorry for your loss” has started to feel like a tic. A reflex. Cultural punctuation that means: I have acknowledged the thing, and now we may proceed. They are just doing their jobs, I know. Still, each time I say the words out loud—each time I have to explain—it brings the loss rushing back, even as I try to accomplish the simplest tasks.

Then I take a breath and try to give grace. Maybe they are sincere. Who am I to judge? Maybe it is not just company policy or training, but something personal. Maybe hearing my words touches a loss of their own—something buried, something that lives just beneath the surface. Maybe a quick, practiced “sorry for your loss” is all they can manage without unraveling. Maybe more words, more eye contact, more connection would risk stirring something they are not ready to face in the middle of a workday.

There is a lesson here for me, too.

These exchanges are teaching me how I want to respond when I am on the other side. I try not to say “sorry for your loss” anymore. I try to offer something more real—a pause, a quiet acknowledgment: “That must be hard.” A moment of presence. A willingness to see the person, not just the circumstance.

It is okay to make a connection. It may recall the pain of my own loss, but perhaps it can lessen the weight of someone else’s.

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