A parent dying is the most common bereavement there is, which is exactly why it gets under-attended. It is expected, it happens to nearly everyone eventually, and so the world tends to hand it a shorter grace period than it needs.
Do not lead with their age. “She had a good long life,” “he was ninety-two, you can’t complain” — this is the “at least” family in its most common costume. Eighty years of a person is not a consolation for losing them; it is eighty years of a person to miss. Nobody has ever felt better for being reminded of the number.
Leave room for a complicated relationship. A great many people lose a parent they were angry at, estranged from, or exhausted by, and the standard script — she was a wonderful woman, he adored you — makes that grief unspeakable. Something as simple as “I know it wasn’t simple between you. That usually makes it heavier, not lighter” gives permission that almost nobody else will offer.
Understand what has just shifted. When the last parent goes, a person becomes the oldest generation in their family, and the only living witness to their own childhood. There is no one left to ask what year they moved house, or who that is in the photograph. People are often blindsided by that particular loneliness weeks later.
The practical wall is real. The death of a parent arrives with an estate, a house to empty, siblings to negotiate with, and a hundred institutions to inform, all of it landing on someone who cannot think straight. Concrete help outperforms every sentence here: sit with them while they make the phone calls; take a carload to the charity shop; bring lunch to the house-clearing.
Something you can say to a coworker, where the bar is lower and the awkwardness higher: “I heard about your mom. I’m so sorry. I’m not going to ask how you are in the middle of the office — but I’m glad you’re back, and I’ve got your Thursday deadline.”
And months later, on a birthday or an anniversary or Mother’s Day, say the name again. Those days are loud for the person carrying them and silent to everyone else.