Grief is characterized much more by waves of feeling that lessen and reoccur, it's less like stages and more like different states of feeling.

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

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.

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

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

The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.

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