A note on language

We use the term ‘someone close to you’ throughout this guide because we are writing it with the intention of being helpful to as wide a range of people as possible and we do not know how you define your relationship to the person who has died.

We acknowledge that some of you may not feel that this does justice to the depth of feeling you have for someone you love but we also want this guide to help people who may feel that ‘loved one’ does not fit so well for the person they are grieving for.

We acknowledge that some of you may have been bereaved of more than one person; we are very sorry that you have experienced this. For ease of reading, we have written this guide as if one person has died; we hope the information will still help you.

We use the words dying, death and died. We understand that these can feel quite stark and direct, perhaps especially when written down. Culturally in the UK, we have broadly become unaccustomed to using these terms and may prefer phrases that seem gentler like ‘passing’ and ‘passed away’.

In our experience, people can become distressed by language that is unclear or does not acknowledge the reality of their situation and so we have chosen what seem like the least ambiguous words. We hope you will bear with us if this is not how you choose to speak about your experience.