Several years ago I learned that a high school and college friend had died at a relatively young age. The only survivor is a sibling whom I barely knew. Is there a polite way to inquire about the circumstances of my friend’s death if I should be able to locate the sibling’s contact information, or would this be considered unacceptable prying into personal information?
Put yourself in their position. Wouldn’t you like hearing from your (family member’s) friends? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, if you do it politely and with compassion. It helps them keep the memories alive.
I had the exact same situation- a long-time friend & I would often go months without calling each other, then pick up out of the blue. She leaves a message on my answering machine & I was going to call a couple days later. Well, one emergency appendectomy & a month recovery & then getting re-adjusted to work & then the holidays, and I realize it had been four months since I got that message. I called her number- it was out of order, as was her cell phone number. So then I did a Google search…
She’d died midway through that four months. I knew her brother’s name & the city he lived in & looked up his number. When I introduced myself, he recalled who I was & confirmed it was indeed her in the death notice, what she’d died of, & so I gave my condolences & went on.
A few weeks later I realized I had lots of unanswered questions, but I thought by then I’d missed my chance. If I were in his situation, I wouldn’t want the same person calling a month later “Hey, hate to drag your dead loved one out of the grave, but I was wondering…”
So yes, do call, but try to get all your questions & comments done in that conversation unless you feel you have an opening to continue.
This is true. In my extended family there was a person who died young, and sometimes years later, someone we barely knew would inquire about him. The person inquiring sometimes hadn’t heard of the death, and if so, they always felt more awkward than necessary…We took it as a sincere compliment that the deceased person was still providing happy memories to someone.
But a phone call between strangers could be a little awkward. Try to make contact by email, or even better, by oldfashioned snail mail–it’s a little more formal, and shows that you are serious. (Use a nice Hallmark greeting card with a simple design, say, flowers and “best wishes” or something generic written on it.) After introducing yourself , explain why you are inquiring, and make sure to include something positive–a sentence or two of nice memories, or something nice that the dead person did for you.