Does anybody else feel absolutely nothing when a coworker tells you their parent died?

I'm not a cold person in other ways. I cry at commercials. I've cried at my dog's vet appointments. But someone at work loses their mother and I hear myself say the correct sentence in the correct tone, and internally there is just a flat surface.

Nothing moves. And then I spend the rest of the day performing an appropriate amount of subdued.

I've gotten very good at it, which is the part that bothers me. I know to lower my voice. I know to say "take all the time you need" and then to not be the first one to bring up work. I know to send the thing to the house instead of the office. I am excellent at this and I feel none of it.

And then I go home and read about a stranger's kid on the internet and I'm wrecked for an hour.

I've started to wonder if it's a proximity thing. Like whether I've got some kind of switch that trips when the person is close enough that I'd be expected to actually do something. Strangers are safe because nothing is required of me. People in my actual life come with obligation attached, and the obligation seems to kill the feeling before it arrives.

My mother is seventy-eight. That's the question underneath this, obviously. I'm going to be standing in that room and I don't know if anything is going to happen.

I'm not looking for someone to tell me I'm secretly deeply empathetic. I'm asking whether anyone recognizes this specific shape — fine with strangers, blank with your own people — and whether it has a name.