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

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

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

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

And after my mother's death I became more open to and empathetic about other people's struggles and losses.

One of the grubby truths about a loss is that you don't just mourn the dead person, you mourn the person you got to be when the lost one was alive. This loss might even be what affects you the most.

A mother is beyond any notion of a beginning. That's what makes her a mother.