TL;DR I understand the meaning behind your words and it's completely acceptable. But the way you phrased your words made me feel like writing my very lengthy thoughts about what the words empathy and sympathy mean to me personally. Empathy is feeling part of what you imagine they're currently feeling. Sympathy is feeling a bit happy or sad for them, but not really feeling what you imagine they're currently feeling.

Please don't consider me to have made any assumptions or judgements about your understanding of the words. It kind of came out as if I was making such assumptions, and that's precisely why I'm explicitly stating that I don't actually have any such assumption or judgement. Lastly don't feel obligated to read it, I wrote it because I was in the mood to ramble. It doesn't need an audience but I'm fine with it having one.

Also I make lots of mistakes while typing on my phone and I haven't gone back and fixed many of them, so it may be a mess.

Your saying that you can't empathize made me want to reply, but I went overboard in my ponderings on the subject, so please don't take any of this as directed at you unless you want any particular part to be directed at you. It's really just my very verbose thoughts on the subject generally, which came out as a reply to your comment, but I don't want it to be interpreted as a direct reply because I I'm sure you understand empathy and sympathy fine, the way you worded what you said just got me thinking and writing a bunch, but I totally get what you'le saying and although my thoughts sound like a correction, really they're just thoughts that were prompted by your comment, but not really directly applicable to your comment. Also, I'm not any kind of expert, so if anyone feels my distinctions are off, it's all just my personal perspective and not any kind of authoritative description. And I may be completely wrong about all of it, lol.

You don't have to have shared first hand experience to empathize. If you can imagine this happening to yourself and imagine it happening to this person and feel a portion of the kind of hurt that you would feel, but feel it due to your brotherly love of a fellow decent good human being who did nothing wrong but was deeply wounded, then you can empathize. It doesn't have to hurt as bad as it hurts that person, it would be unhealthy if it hurt you that bad, but if it pains your heart and brings sorrow and shared loss to your soul, that's empathy. Letting down your walls and allowing it to hurt is empathy. But sometimes it's not easy to drop one's own walls and defenses at a moment's notice and that's alright. If you feed bad for the person's suffering but can't for whatever reason feel to much of any degree the same sort of hurt, that's sympathy. Sympathy is actually usually the more healthy response because there's a hella lot of suffering in the world and being too empathetic for an individual or a little bit empathetic of everyone in such a way that it accumulates and becomes overwhelming, that's generally unhealthy. But being completely empathetic towards someone you personally know is fine so long as it doesn't go on for so long as to be detrimental to your own life. And it's fine to be momentarily completely empathetic towards a stranger, but it shouldn't consume your life and you're under no obligation to feel empathy in any particular instance. I just think that to say you can't feel empathy for a parent's loss of their children because you're not a parent, is probably not accurate. Another way to imagine it is to imagine how whichever of your parents you're closer to had lost you in this way is another way to empathize. To imagine how your parent would have felt and to realize that a real mother pretty much like yours is going through that horrific nightmare and panic and grief and suffering and misery and hopelessness and anger and rage and frustration and despair and confusion and regret and shock and inability to process at times and feeling too much ef everything at times and sobbing uncontrollably at times, that's empathy. You don't have to feel all of it, but if you feel it enough for it to hurt, that's empathy. If you sincerely feel bad for her, but don't hurt and ache inside, that's sympathy.