An insufficiently-sympathetic response

A neighbor of mine last year invited us to a wake for our mortgage broker, whose name I forget now. He had contracted some vicious form of stomach cancer, and died within a few months, leaving his wife and daughter behind.

My neighbor was saddened, and wanted to include us in the grieving group.

But my mortgage broker was only an acquaintance. I had met him twice, talked to him on the phone twice, met his family once at a barbecue, and that was it. I did not know him. And so I didn't go to the wake.

I'm sure that my neighbor thought I was cold. But I have a closer relationship to my tax accountant, whom I see once a year. (I wouldn't go to his wake, either, even though I like him. I think a person would have to be very close to me for me to participate in the birth or death rituals. It just doesn't interest me.)

In the same vein, a friend recently told me that a friend of theirs had just died of prostate cancer. I knew the deceased also, somewhat, but hadn't spoken to him in at least 13 years. And I knew that he had had a long-term relationship with one of my other friends, and that he had treated her very badly, because he was an alcoholic and a womanizer. More reasons not to talk to him in 13 years.

So I think my noncommittal response to the news of his death annoyed my friend.

Perhaps I lack the capacity for sympathy. I have learned the proper code phrases and facial expressions to simulate it, but I don't really know what it is.

Clearly I need to work on it.