Talking about death.

My Japanese friend was telling me via MSN about the death of her seven year old nephew the other day who died in a car crash. Although we always converse in Japanese, I had no idea how to reply to her. I know this question is rather vague but are there any common responses to use when somebody is speaking about the death of a relative, particularly a child?

Also Is there a equivalent of 'How are you coping (with the death)?' in Japanese? I tried ALC but that didn't give me any answers, so I can assume that the average Japanese person wouldn't ask such a question. I may be wrong though, correct me.

Just because the expression does not come up in a dictionary, it doesn't mean the Japanese people don't ask question of that nature - of course we do, but "cope with" is a colloquial expression to begin with, and can also have the somewhat detached, matter-of-factness of "dealing with," or "handling (the situation)." And the question itself is quite direct. Instead we might ask "how are you doing?" "are you doing alright" "have you recovered from (the shock)," etc., and if the one who suffered a loss feels like talking about it, yes, they will talk about it.

A common response (immediately upon hearing about the death) would be "o-kuyami moushiagemasu" (my condolences). Or "taihen deshitane" (It might have been hard.)

Whoops, I meant to say "It *must* have been hard" in the last part of my earlier post.

I think that an equavalent to "How are you coping?" is その後、どうですか。

If you feel that the context would not be clear, you can say, "jiko kara shibaraku tachimasuga, sonogo, dodesuka?"

But I think that things like condolence or encouragement are becoming more boarderless. For example, I forgot what the expression was but, a European friend once wrote something in her language to express condolence, and we found it more thoughtful and unique compared to the lame traditional expressions we'd been used to. Then after a while, I realized that a similar expression existed among the Japanese examples for telegram greetings. So why not try to express whatever comes from your heart. You don't have to worry about taboos.

That said, on a related note, I feel that, similar to expressions like "ganbatte," the expression "taihen" is not as appreciated as it used to be and should be used with caution nowadays. When you're really in a taihen (hard/tough) situation, you don't even want to hear that word. Some might think, "It's easy for you to say taihen, but you are probabaly not." So positive words might be better. In particular, people tend to feel better when they are able to talk about it. Perhaps you can ask questions about what kind of a boy her nephew was like. And if she doesn't want to talk about it yet, her reply would probably be simple, and then you can just leave her alone for a while.

While I agree that "ganbatte" is a phrase to be avoided when talking to a person in distress (because it puts pressure on them as if to say they are not doing the best/most they can), I mentioned "taihen..." just as a way to get the conversation onto the topic, without specifically mentioning what it was, so that the other person can talk about it if they want to, and if not, no.