A man's gotta know his limitations

Great line from Dirty Harry, where he lets the chief know there are things he can handle that his boss cannot.  One of my many limitations is a lack of death empathy (deampathy?).  I know what not to say, but I never know what to say.  Not being religious or otherwise superstitious, I have difficulty with the standard comfort lines.  So here's how this train started:

My great-aunt bit it two weeks ago, prompting Mother to guilt me into sending my aunt a sympathy card.  I don't even know the lady.  She lives somewhere in New York (mom had to email me the address).  It's been over 30 years since we were in the same room.  What I do know is that my grandmother hated her older sister. Went out of her way to tell the young me how her elder bossed people around with a bitchy self-righteousness for all of her 97 years. It sucks that my grandmother died first.

My loving wife picked up the card from the dollar store, so at least we didn't waste money. Despite it all, I wrote "sorry for your loss," as if the old bag was misplaced and they will find her under a cushion.  "Nobody liked your mother," although true, didn't seem like the right thing to say.

I have spent unfortunate windshield time on my wife's eulogy due to some recent cancer false alarms.  The plan is for her to be at my funeral, but shit got real for a while.  (She's fine, it was a benign infection.) Anyway, it went something like "Please spare us the standard comfort lines. Please don't tell us that she is in a better place," I imagined myself lecturing a stunned crowd.  "Her place is taking care of our family, being a mother, a wife, and a daughter.  If your fucked up faith says it is better for my wife to Be With God rather than kiss her children goodnight, please keep it to your fucked up self."

Today was a 2 hour round trip to pick up a chair from a client who checked into hospice. Medicare will pay for a wheelchair or skilled nursing, but not both.  While I loaded the chair, the husband was talking about his wife and once again I was at a loss.  Luckily there was a job to do and I thanked him for his time and got out.  "She'll be dead soon," although true, didn't seem like the right thing to say.