How to Express Condolences
My mother Ellen recently passed away. She lived a very good life. She raised three daughters. She loved art, writing and travelling.
I miss my mother. So for this week everyday grammarI want to share how we can express sympathy, or sympathywhen someone has experienced the death of a loved one.
According to American custom, we want to say we take care of it. We try to bring them Comfort in their time from grief and sadness. We want to be gentle, considerate and respectful while expressing compassion.
But how do we do that in American English?
Show our support
When someone dies, we usually use the phrasal verb die. This phrase combines the verb happen with the adverb a way. We use this expression to talk about death more gently and respectfully.
When we want to show our sympathy or understanding of someone’s loss, we can use these simple expressions:
I am sorry for your loss.
I was heartbroken by this sad news.
to be heartbroken means we feel sad or hopeless, almost like our heart hurts when something bad happens. This sentence is in passive voice. But we can change the sentence to active voice by saying:
This sad news breaks my heart.
We also use these shorter terms to describe our sadness:
My sincere condolences.
My deepest sympathy.
And we can add verbs and subjects to turn the expressions into complete sentences, such as:
Please accept my heartfelt condolences (or deepest sympathy) for your loss (or that of your family).
Here we turn the expression into a respectful command by using the phrase please accept.
To miss someone
to fail someone means you are sad and wish they were still with you.
We use this verb when they are still alive, but we may not be able to see them as often as we would like. But we also use this verb to say we miss someone when they have it deceased:
He/She/She will be missed.
This sentence is in the passive and future tense. To show that we are missing someone right now, we can say the active voice:
I miss her a lot.
She misses her father every day.
Sometimes we share happy thoughts about someone who did deceased. For example:
I will never forget her dancing to her favorite songs in Rio de Janeiro.
They will never forget what he did for them.
When there are no words
Sometimes the sense of loss is so great that we don’t always know what to say. For these times we have expressions that we can use, such as:
I’m so sorry, but I’m at a loss for words.
Words cannot express my sadness at your loss.
Words cannot express my deepest sympathy.
Final Thoughts
In today’s report, we learned some ways we can offer our condolences and sympathy to those who are experiencing the loss of a loved one.
We learned short phrases to share, such as my sincere condolences and my deepest sympathy. We talked about how to express who we are fail someone. We even looked at some phrases to share when we feel like there are no words to describe the feeling of loss.
I would like to close this report by thanking our readers and listeners over the last few weeks. Writing to us or leaving a comment has really meant a lot to me over the past month. I increase in value it so much!
Thank you and I’m Faith Pirlo.
Faith Pirlo wrote this lesson for VOA Learning English.
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words in this story
sympathy – n. a feeling or expression of compassion and sadness, especially when someone is grieving the death of a family member, friend, etc.
Comfort -n. a state of feeling less worried or upset after a period of trouble or pain
grief – n. deep sadness, especially when someone dies
phrase – n. a group of two or more words that express a single idea but do not usually form a complete sentence
passive voice – n. a way of writing or speaking that uses passive verbs, in which the subject receives the action of a verb.
active voice – n. a way of writing or speaking that uses active verbs in which the subject performs the action of the verb.
increase in value – v. enjoying and realizing the full value of something
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