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.

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.

For sure, the funeral industry seems intensely cynical to me and I don't think it is HELPING people mourn.

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

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

A mother, after all, is your entry into the world. She is the shell in which you divide and become a life. Waking up in a world without her is like waking up in a world without sky: unimaginable.

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