I wasn't prepared for the fact that grief is so unpredictable. It wasn't just sadness, and it wasn't linear. Somehow I'd thought that the first days would be the worst and then it would get steadily better - like getting over the flu. That's not how it was.

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

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.

My mother never liked Mother's Day. She thought it was a fake holiday dreamed up by Hallmark to commodify deep sentiments that couldn't be expressed with a card.

There is no single way of grieving. But research suggests that there are some broad similarities among grievers.

My theory is this: Women falter when they're called on to be highly self-conscious about their talents. Not when they're called on to enact them.

Grief is a bad moon, a sleeper wave. It's like having an inner combatant, a saboteur who, at the slightest change in the sunlight, or at the first notes of a jingle for a dog food commercial, will flick the memory switch, bringing tears to your eyes.