What to say to a deaf person whose child passed away?

I'm sure that those in the deaf and hard of hearing community will at one time or another will experience this scenario when you know of a deaf/hh person who lost his/her child and will not know how to respond.

In Deafreedom discussion forum there is this independent thinking, firebrand of a gal who is deaf where I have met her personally (along with my wife and kids) a few years back had this great little story about how she was approached by a stranger over the lost her of her adult daughter.

A lot of people don't know what to say when someone has lost a child. I have a golden opportunity to TELL you...here. I hope you never need this advice but if you do...here you go.

I have only met one person that knew what to say and he was a complete stranger at Wal-Mart. My eye doctor. I am talking about everyday people. All my R/L friends save two vanished.

Here is what he said.

He was making general conversation and of course the "how many children do you have" question came up. I cringe every time but I am getting better. Cringing is okay. I said I have two children, my son Andrew who is 28 and my daughter Nicole who would have been 35 but she passed away in June. Silence. Now this is when I usually get shunned. I hear "I'm sorry" and never hear another word.

That is the wrong thing to do. WRONG.

He apparently thought for a minute or two...I had already gone into my usual retreat mode. Then he said "What did she do? What was her name? Did she have kids, was she married? Did she have pets?" The questions kept coming....at first I was startled, and yes slightly off-balanced because it was unusual to have someone talk to me about Nicole. As I answered the questions I realized something...I missed talking about both of my children. I had lost the "right" to talk about my children and most parents take pride in talking about their kids, their grandkids, etc... and when you disclose your child has passed away you lose the ability to share their life with the world.

Read the rest of her post in Deafreedom. What Sherry gave was an invaluable insight to all this. I'm the type of person who would rather not bring up the topic of somebody's death or even tell the person how sorry I am for their lost. It would seem......too personal to do so..... and feel that it'd be an invasion of somebody's own solitude and grieving period. But I've never thought of approaching it from the viewpoint on expressing an interest about a person's own child who passed away versus saying "I'm sorry. "