A death from a long illness is very different from a sudden death. It gives you time to say goodbye and time to adjust to the idea that the beloved will not be with you anymore.

Be patient with yourself. Don't make the loss harder by thinking you should be a certain way, or have bounced back, etc.

'Hamlet' is a play about a man whose grief is deemed unseemly.

I am the indoctrinated child of two lapsed Irish Catholics. Which is to say: I am not religious.

It's a blessing not to be alone in your grief but it's also painful to see your parents and siblings in pain.

One of the difficulties with grief research is that it risks making certain kinds of grief seem normal and others abnormal - and of course having a sense of the contours of grief is, I think, truly useful, one has to remember it's not a science, it's an individual reckoning, which science is just trying to help us describe.

A mother is the portal by which you enter the world.