I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while now but, I kept putting it off until today. First, what is death?
Death is the cessation of life and all associated processes; the end of an organism’s existence as an entity independent from its environment and its return to an inert, nonliving state.
That said, I’ll like to state a few things you should never do in a “death” situation.
1. DO NOT POST ABOUT SOMEONE’S DEATH ON SOCIAL MEDIA IMMEDIATELY YOU HEAR ABOUT IT.
In this era of “social media craze”, where everyone wants to post something and share with the world, it is extremely wrong to post about someone’s death especially when you’re not directly related to the person. This is because other direct relatives of the person may be unaware of the death and your “RIP post” might end up being a source of great distress to them.
(By direct relatives I mean, son or daughter or wife or husband or father or mother or brother or sister of the death person.)
2. DO NOT CALL THE BEREAVED TO SYMPATHIZE IMMEDIATELY.
Most people call a person immediately they hear about the demise of the person’s loved one. In as much as this is mostly done in good fate, it almost always turns out bad, reason being that most times, the person might still be unaware of the death or not in the right frame of mind to accept “condolences”. Now, some people are smart enough to change the topic once they call and notice you’re unaware, but there are this group I call professional-badnews-mongers; this one’s insist on condoling with you even after they notice you’re clueless about what they are saying, they say something like, “ah, sorry o, I didn’t know that you didn’t know, I just heard that Mr A is death and I decided to call and know how you’re doing”. This statement is the height of being unreasonable, never do it please.
3. DO NOT HIDE A LOVED ONE’S DEATH.
In a situation where a loved one is death, a lot of the relatives tend to hide the occurrence from other relatives who are not within the location where the death occurred. Now, this is mostly done by these relatives for the good of the other relative(s) who are not around, but, we all know that bad news travels fast. So instead of hiding it, I’ll rather suggest you find a way of breaking the news as soon as it occurs to relatives who aren’t around to avoid their finding out about this from the professional-badnews-mongers or worst, seeing the post on social media.
4. DO NOT COME TO A BEREAVED HOUSE HUNGRY.
This might sound funny to a lot of people but, it’s really very annoying for one to come to a house claiming to condole with people and still coming to ask them for food and/or drinks. Some go as far as “placing an order” of their preferred food and/or drinks to the bereaved. This is really bad and should never be done.
5. DO NOT GOSSIP OR COMMENT ON HOW THE BEREAVED IS LOOKING UNSCATHED.
Now, a lot of people make comments like “see how strong they look”, “they look like they haven’t cried at all”, “Mrs A’s eyes aren’t swollen”, “none of them came out to welcome us”, “they are not even glad we came to mourn with them”. These and many more are some of the statements people make and it’s really very disheartening. When you come to mourn with people, you should be concerned about how they are and feel generally and not gossiping or making comments that will bring more hurt to them.
6. DO NOT CALL A THOUSAND TIMES OR LEAVE A THOUSAND MESSAGES.
Once you hear that someone has lost a loved one, please do not call more than twice or drop more than one message. It’s good to condole but, when the bereaved is not picking your call or responding to your message, it’s most likely that the person is either not in the right frame of mind or is not with his/her phone.
Phew! I’m done, feel free to add any more ethics you think should be adopted.
Wishing you all a productive week ahead.
PPBlessing 