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

If the condition of grief is nearly universal, its transactions are exquisitely personal.

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

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

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.

I'm not much like my mother; that role falls to my brothers, who have more of her blithe and freewheeling spirit.

Many researchers say the dominant emotion experienced after loss is yearning or searching. And while you might feel more anger early on, it's accompanied by a whole host of other feelings.