Good Manners and Perspective are significant reasons why loss and grief come with social symptoms, and especially social withdrawal. The good manners part likely also explains why more people are not slugged by the bereaved.
People who are grieving typically don’t have emotional space to feel anything remotely sympathetic for everyday disappointments and inconveniences. In fact, listening to people bitch and moan about anything less tragic and permanent than death may well fill with the bereaved with searing rage and/or sorrow that they have discovered yet another so-called friend to cross off their list.
That social withdrawing may, in fact, simply be the result of Friend List pruning. After all, who wants or needs a friend who doesn’t have the good sense to avoid talking about her hangnail to someone whose partner just died?!
It is tricky.
The Perspective of the bereaved has radically shifted. Anything less than death now feels like an amazing gift.
Roof caved in? It can be fixed.
Dog events cancelled? Meh.
You burned the eggplant and set the kitchen on fire? R.I.P. eggplant?? What the problem?!
You get the idea.
This is why it is important to check yourself when you talk to a bereaved person. If they have the space or desire to hear your news, they will ask. And when they do, proceed cautiously — it likely was not an invitation to back up your Dump Truck of Disappointments and Inconveniences and unload on someone drowning in a Real Problem.
Raging Perspective is part of Grief. Tread Lightly on that shattered heart.