There are many kinds of loss embedded in a loss - the loss of the person, and the loss of the self you got to be with that person. And the seeming loss of the past, which now feels forever out of reach.

But when my mother died, I found that I did not believe that she was gone.

While I did a lot of research, I ended up feeling that the best way to write about grief was to describe it from the inside out - the show the strange intensities that come along with it, the peculiar thoughts, the longing for that past - all the strange moments of thinking you glimpse the dead person on the street, or in your dreams.

I envy my Jewish friends the ritual of saying kaddish - a ritual that seems perfectly conceived, with its built-in support group and its ceremonious designation of time each day devoted to remembering the lost person.

Loss is so paradoxical: It is at once enormous and tiny.

Many grievers experience intense yearning or longing after a death - more than they experience, say, denial.

Grief is at once a public and a private experience. One's inner, inexpressible disruption cannot be fully realized in one's public persona.