Reply to What do you do when a friend or neighbor loses a parent or partner etc?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]That’s sweet. Maybe dh and I just know cold people?! When a neighbors husband died, no one did anything. We tried to organize something and no one would bite, so we just sent something on our own. Where do you live? [/quote]

The community has to exist prior to the loss in order for it to come together like that after. Otherwise people feel like they are being invasive. Yes sometimes this means that people will assume a person has support from other sources when they don't. This happened to me when I had a late pregnancy loss and people just stayed away from me and a lot of people at work and in the neighborhood just assumed we had family and friend support but we really didn't have that much because our families are very dysfunctional. While this is unfortunate it's also understandable. If you've never been even remotely close to someone in the past it is hard to create that closeness when they are in deep grief. It feels very intimate and hard.

Some people are more comfortable with this than others but I've also found that in highly transient areas (like DC) this is harder than it is in places with a lot of long-established families. I think it's because a lot of people feel burned when they invest a lot in their neighborhoods and communities and then so many people just leave unexpectedly. In DC it is not uncommon for people to pick up and move when their kids are in the middle of elementary whereas in other places that would be fairly uncommon. I've felt blindsided by moves from people we'd become close to and who our kids were close to. But this is an outgrowth of people living lives that are more career-focused than family-focused and where people prioritize travel and being cosmopolitan over stability. The attitude here is that kids will adjust and that moving for a big job or a cool opportunity abroad will actually be good for kids. In communities where people stay put there is a culture of wanting to stay in place for kids and really go deep on community. I just don't see that in this area as much though certainly it's true in many parts of the northeast (plenty of neighborhoods in New York and Pennsylvania where DH and I grew up where families have lived there for multiple generations).[/quote]

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