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

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.

My mother died of metastatic colorectal cancer shortly before three P.M. on Christmas Day of 2008. I don't know the exact time of her death, because none of us thought to look at a clock for a while after she stopped breathing.

The truth is, I need to experience my mother's presence in the world around me and not just in my head.

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

Loss is so paradoxical: It is at once enormous and tiny.

I envy my Jewish friends the ritual of saying kaddish - a ritual that seems perfectly conceived, with its built-in support group and its ceremonious designation of time each day devoted to remembering the lost person.