Grief-Challenged

I have made a discovery about myself over the past few weeks. I am stuck when it comes to people I know who are grieving. I feel deeply for them (as much as I could having not gone through their situation myself), but then when it comes to talking to them about their grief, I feel like I'm in quicksand.

We have a lovely family of Peruvians next door to us. The day we moved in, Victor (the dad) came out and helped us get some things into the house, including our tricky couch that almost didn't make it through the doorway. He and Joel sweated like men, but it didn't erase Victor's wide grin and happy eyes. We spent our first nights here on air mattresses Victor brought over voluntarily, and we took our first trip to the grocery store thanks to a map on which Victor had painstakingly marked the nearest shopping centers.

His wife, Maybe, is sweet and gentle and also very friendly. She came over without hesitation the night Everett split his head open to doctor his wounds. She spent years of her life bringing her nursing skills to remote Peruvian Villages. She and Victor have two beautiful daughters who are kind and well-behaved. They are a remarkable family--they built a beautiful, spacious house on the shores of lake Titikaka completely by themselves--and we have loved living near them, so we were overjoyed to hear that they were expecting their third child.

A couple of weeks ago, we received word that the baby had died. Maybe was only five and a half months along, and she had been visiting Peru to care for her sick mother at the time. My heart broke for her--it is a difficult thing to lose a baby that late in the pregnancy. The friend across the hall who told us the news was asked by Victor to spread the word so no one felt bad when asking about the pregnancy. She suggested that we give him our support when we see him and also said a list for dinner sign-ups would be going around as soon as Maybe returned.

I have seen our next-door neighbors several times since then, and each time, I knew I should say something but I couldn't find the words. I couldn't find a way to work it into the happy conversation. I couldn't think of a way to bring up what happened. I knew I should open my mouth, that anything was better than nothing, but my brain disconnected and nothing worked right. Platitudes are cliche and un-helpful, but sometimes they are better than not even acknowledging that something happened. It is easier for me when I am talking to friends rather than acquaintances, but I find it hard to know what to say even to members of my own family. This could be remedied by the fact that hugs can convey more meaning than words, but I find hugs more difficult to give than words.

If you have ever been going through a difficult time and I haven't acknowledged your hardship, I apologize. I am still figuring out how to get my brain and mouth to coordinate. There is some mechanism between the two that ceases to work the moment I know I should express something appropriate. It is a problem, and I am working on it. I hope I haven't neglected anyone's feelings and I hope I will be better in the future!

Are there any of you out there who are good at responding to grief? What do you do? I'm not so concerned with saying "the right thing" as I am with saying something. How do you get your words out? Have you never had much trouble or do you just have a good way of getting your mouth to function?