Quote Originally Posted by witeowl View Post
True, it seems very unfeeling and insensitive when the circumstances are less natural, but know that it is one way that people show that they care about both the deceased and the living. Asking those questions show that they're also affected by the death. When I had to deal with phone calls after my step-father's death, I never once had to answer that question to a stranger; they never asked. It was only the people who cared about him or me who asked.

My general approach if someone tells me that someone they know/love has died is just to express my sympathy, say oh, that's terrible it was so young... And just leave it at that. If the person wants to talk about it and volunteers info, I'll listen and be interested. But if they don't volunteer info on why someone died, I'll just share good memories I had of them if I knew them.

Generally if it's a good friend or someone I know, I already know that their father is sick with melanoma or something like that, so I don't need to ask "oh, what did they die of?"

So not asking why someone died on my part is mostly a - okay, someone's intimate medical details are not my business unless they volunteer it, and that's just often times a painful topic... I just find it's better to let people talk, because people do want to talk about their deceased love one... and my experience has been when I needed to talk about that sort of thing, most of my friends (okay, we were all young - so maybe this is different when you get older), would just rapidly change the subject because they really had no idea what to say or just couldn't relate.