I have never been that great at saying the appropriate things in awkward situations.
I'd go so far to say that if anything terrible should happen to anyone I knew, that I should not be allowed to speak. that someone should lock me in a room and clamp my moth shut. Like so many people, I just don't know what to say or do and so I babble and say the first thing that comes into my head. I just feel so awful, and being a pretty blunt person my inappropriate replies just sound like direct insults.
For example, a good friend of mine told me yesterday that his grandfather had died after a long battle with Alzheimer's. I felt really bad for him, but wasn't quite sure what to say and so I tried to console him with a "I'm really sorry" and a "That's terrible." But after a while I ran out of comforting things to say, and I suddenly made the connection that it was his mother's father who'd died. I asked him, knowing her mother had died some years previous, and my friend nodded...Yes it was her father who'd died.
What did I have to say in return?
"Oh. So, I guess your Mum's an orphan now, huh?"
Stunned silence ensued.
The ground never swallows you whole when you want it to.
