Keep checking in after the flowers are gone and the ordinary errands return.

Support after a death arrives in a rush and then thins out almost on a schedule. The visits, the food and the messages cluster in the first weeks, while the person is still numb, and they fade just as the numbness does. What follows is the harder stretch, when everyone else has returned to their ordinary lives and the errands have to be done anyway.

Put a date in your calendar for a month from now, and another for three. Send something small on those days with no reply expected. Offering to handle one dull errand is often worth more than another conversation about how they are doing.