Why, a friend of mine and I were just thinking about that the other day… Down at the bottom, where we talk where to link to from Mentat.

The best thing to do, in my opinion, is to let the bereaved person talk about the death as much as he wants to. That’s what has helped me the most. But being around grief, and especially the deep grief people have when they’ve lost someone they were close to, is scary and hard for people who aren’t experiencing grief themselves.

I don’t think the response you label as “Emotional Vampire” is necessarily bad, maybe it should be qualified.

There’s probably a division to be made between when the sympathizer can do something to change the situation, and when they can’t (e.g. death).

Here’s a nice list of things not to say to a depressed person; which is really a somewhat different kettle of fish compared to the sympathy issue. This looks like a derivative of a list that emerged on the usenet depression group a longtime ago; but which I can’t find.

http://www.mandysdepression.com/WhatNot2SayDepressedContents.htm