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Breaking bad news

  • 16-01-2006 2:00pm
    #1
    LegacyUser
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 166,026 ✭✭✭✭


    I’ll try to keep this brief. I’ve just found myself in a position where I may have to break some bad news to a friend and I’m really not sure how to go about doing it.

    I got a phone call over the weekend from my mum who told me that a close friend of ours from home (UK - I now live in Ireland) has died and it was suicide. He had suffered severe depression for years and had come close to it before so it wasn’t a complete shock, but the circumstances were fairly horrific. We hadn’t heard from him in a while which was unusual so tried to phone him over Christmas when I was at home with my mum, but there was no answer. Mum got a call at the weekend from his daughter.

    Anyway, to get to the point, this friend was in a relationship with another friend of mine quite a few years ago. It didn’t work out but they remained very close afterwards and he remained close to her children (from her first marriage). In fact they stayed in touch for the next few years until she remarried and moved away a couple of years ago. At this point she lost touch with a lot of her friends (including me). I think she is still somewhere in the UK. My mum is pretty sure she’s not aware of what’s happened so we want to contact her and let her know as she’ll more than likely want to attend the funeral. Firstly, I have to try and track her down as I’ve no idea where she’s living at the moment. Next, if I manage to find her, I need to tell her that her ex has died and I know she’s going to be absolutely devastated (and her kids will be too). I've been feeling pretty low about the whole thing myself but I know it's going to hit her really hard. I feel I should be the person to tell her as they met through me and she doesn’t really have any connection with his family.

    I honestly haven’t a clue how to break it to her. Has anyone had to do this and is there a right way/wrong way?


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