Light griefs are plaintive, but great ones are dumb.

Small sorrows talk; large ones tend to go quiet. The complaints you hear most are usually about the manageable things, while whatever has genuinely knocked someone sideways often produces nothing at all, because there is no sentence that fits and no energy for making one. Silence from a person in trouble is not evidence they are fine. It is frequently the opposite.

If someone has gone quiet after something hard, do not wait for them to ask. Turn up with something ordinary and undemanding, and be willing to say nothing. And if you are the silent one, you are not failing at grief by having no words for it.