This is part of the complexity of grief: A piece of you recognizes it is an extreme state, an altered state, yet a large part of you is entirely subject to its demands.

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

But there is a discomfort that surrounds grief. It makes even the most well-intentioned people unsure of what to say. And so many of the freshly bereaved end up feeling even more alone.

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

I live to collect information, and I am also a perfectionist.

I think that grief is a profound spiritual, metaphysical, and - oddly - physical reckoning with death, which we don't understand well. It's both the process by which you relearn the world in the absence of someone who was a pillar in it, and the process in which you confront the reality of death.

Many Americans don't mourn in public anymore - we don't wear black, we don't beat our chests and wail.