What to Say When Someone Loses a Family Member They Were Estranged From

The death of an estranged family member produces a specific kind of grief that most people haven't encountered and don't know how to support. It's not the clean grief of losing someone close. It's tangled with the estrangement — with whatever caused it, with the relationship that was lost long before the death, with the particular finality that comes when death closes a door that estrangement had left technically open. The person grieving may feel things that seem contradictory: relief and sadness, grief and anger, the loss of someone they'd already let go of and the loss of the possibility that things might ever have been different.

Don't assume you know what the loss means to them

The first rule for supporting someone through this kind of loss is to not assume. The estrangement might have been their choice and they might feel entirely at peace with it. Or they might be devastated. Or they might be surprised by feelings they didn't expect to have. You don't know, and the only way to find out is to ask or to listen.

"I'm so sorry. How are you doing with it?" is a better opening than any assumption about what the loss means. Let them tell you where they are before you try to meet them there.

Name the complexity if they bring it up

Some people going through this kind of grief feel embarrassed or confused by what they're feeling, because it doesn't match what they expected or what others seem to expect. If they bring up the complication — the estrangement, the relief, the unexpected grief, the anger — don't try to resolve it for them. Saying "that makes sense, it's complicated" is more useful than trying to organize their feelings into something that makes more sense from the outside.

"I can only imagine how tangled all of this feels" acknowledges the complexity without requiring it to be explained or resolved.

Don't bring up the estrangement if they don't

If they're grieving and they haven't mentioned the estrangement, don't mention it. They know the history. Bringing it up when they haven't done so puts a frame on their grief that they may not have chosen. Follow their lead entirely on how the death and the estrangement are being held in relation to each other.

Show up the way you'd show up for any grief. The complication doesn't change the basic human need to know someone is there. Be there. Say the name if they give you the opening to say it. Let them tell you what they need and then do that, as best you can, without requiring the grief to be simpler than it is.