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

Faith does help mourners survive their loss, some studies suggest; but I imagine one still struggles.

I believe in the importance of individuality, but in the midst of grief I also find myself wanting connection - wanting to be reminded that the sadness I feel is not just mine but ours.

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.

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.

'Hamlet' is a play about a man whose grief is deemed unseemly.

Grief is at once a public and a private experience. One's inner, inexpressible disruption cannot be fully realized in one's public persona.