Just some context - my ex, one of my best friends, was killed in a plane crash two weekends ago. I thought that I've been dealing with it as well as can be expected with last week finding me fairly upbeat while remembering her fondly, but this week's been pretty bad and I think I might need some help or at least some advice with how to cope.

I'm so sorry ooga_booga. I'm not a qualified advice giver, but speaking from experience, can you get together, bond, and remember with other people who were in her life? If that's not feasible, maybe some help, yeah. That's awful, again, I'm sorry for such a sudden loss.

I will email you.

Thanks rainbaby. Spending time with friends who knew her helps a lot, and I think they're worried about me as well. Mel was the first person whom I've loved to have died - I never really knew my grandparents, making this a completely new experience. The worst part is that she would be the one I'd call when I needed help coping and now I can't.

Thanks, GOML, by the way.

Ooga, that's awful news. I am really sorry.

I wonder if you would mind my piggybacking a bit? My maternal grandmother passed away at a good old age last Easter, and I don't know if my Mom has been grieving really. Anyone have any suggestions for such a situation?

Ooga, the only thing I can suggest is what rainbaby said. Sharing life with those whom your lost loved one shared can be a great feeling. Sorry for the inelegant sentence!

I'm sorry, sweetie. Hugs.

I found a book called The Courage To Grieve to be helpful. It's small and, as I recall, not too dreadfully self-helpy.

Thanks richat, and I'm sorry to hear about your grandmother and I wish I had some advice for your Mom. One of the things I've realized going through this is that it does help to share good memories of the person who's died. My friend Uge and I put together a blog to remember Mel, but I didn't post anything the last couple of days because it just hurt too much.
I just realized that I'd only looked at AskMe tags and not done a search, so a quick one came back with this, which was posted by our own essexjan. There's some good advice in that thread, it seems, and there's quite a bit there to read.

Thanks, Bean. The hugs are greatly appreciated. I'll see if I can snag a copy of the book off Powell's.

1) Never feel guilty about how you feel grief. We all have different ways and they're all as valid as each other.

2) The Seven Stages Of Grief helped me immensely. At stages of my grief I could think... "Hmmm. Step 5, interesting". It made me feel better that my reaction was relatively predictable and an end was in sight. Of course, YMMV

I'm not a big fan of therapy in these situations, and would recommend trying to deal with it with friends and family. It's not going to be easy, but it's not meant to be. If you find yourself still unable to cope long after others have learnt to cope (e.g. a year), then consider therapy then.

Religion helped me. I'm not a religious person but spent a long time reflecting on the nature of the soul as a metaphor for the good that a person permeated into mine and others lives before passing. Find something you believe in and use it as a crutch. Because, you need a crutch.

I'm working on that email...

I'd heard of the seven stages, seanyboy. Thanks for linking to it - my memory had mangled it to be five stages: denial, anger, something, something, anger, and acceptance. Thanks as well for the advice although it's going to take some thinking to find something which I still believe in.

Grief indeed has stages. A lot of them suck. But you really do have to do the grieving and not push it aside.

When my friend died of cancer I-literally-cried every day for three months. Perhaps a little extreme. But after that it got a little bit more bearable. Now I can think back fondly-but once in awhile when he is mentioned I still get tearyeyed.

Don't be ashamed of your grief, and do not, I repeat, do NOT let anyone else tell you how to grieve, how long to grieve, or especially, to quit grieving. It is none of their business.

I wish there were something I could say to make it all better. I know there isn't.
*hugs*

The last being I really grieved hard for was also named Mel. The seven stages were very helpful for me during that time. I haven't lost any close human loved ones since I was really little, so I can only imagine how difficult that must be. The pain will lessen in time, but you will never truly stop missing them on some level.

ooga, I'm so sorry you're going through this. The best advice I got was just do the things that make you feel better, and don't do things that make you feel bad. It sounds stupidly simple, but being reminded that I didn't have to do anything helped. A lot of well-meaning friends tried to get me to do stuff that was just going to be detrimental (going out drinking to "distract" me, getting into wholly inappropriately selfish conversations about their own fear of death, bringing up topics of conversation that were just hurtful -- which for me, was like, anything involving family, hospitals, or sickness), and it was good to realize that I could say no and have that be a healthy choice.

I also spent a lot of time working through my anger by getting into arguments on bulletin boards, but I'm not sure I recommend that.

Know that you're probably not going to be interested in much in the way of everyday life or pop culture or politics or the rest of the things your friends probably talk about most of the time, and know they're therefore probably going to treat you a bit weird for the next few months. It's normal to feel totally diconnected. You're going though something big and they may not get that. But it helps to have people around who have gone through it, because they have a better perspective on what you're going through.

It's been more than a year since my mom died, and I still have crying fits about it. I know that I'll miss her for the rest of my life. There's not an end to grief -- despite the fact that most of your friends will forget about your grief after a few weeks and wonder why you're not back to "normal" -- there's just a new normal that you have to get used to.

I don't mean any of this to sound negative about your support network; I just found that we don't deal well with grief in this country, and most of my friends were so uncomfortable with what I was going through that they often made me feel worse, and I wish someone had warned me that might happen (things are more or less back to normal with them now).

And I was about to recommend the therapist I saw, but it seems like her website has disappeared and she's no longer on Psychology Today (weird). To find her, I went to the Psychology Today therapist search and just emailed anyone who, for whatever reason, appealed to me. I think I emailed 8 therapists, and then read their replies and picked the one I connected to best.

You might also want to check out the support groups offered by Pathways Hospice. I do volunteer work for them, and they're a great organization. I think the support groups are mostly in the South Bay, so you might need a car, but they're free and open to the general public.

Again, I'm so sorry. Feel free t o email.

Nothing to add, except a hug for Ooga_Booga. :(

Also, yes, grief can come and go in wholly inexplicable ways. I'd be going along great and then Wham!, be suddenly unable to leave the house. That's OK, too.

Also (again), from what I understand, the "stages" of grief (which were actually originally written to describe the person dying, not the bereaved) are not considered chronological, or a progression. You can cycle through all of them in order or out of order, then cycle back through them again. Don't think you have to be at one stage, or think that you were already angry so you don't get to be angry again, for instance.

Bunnyfire - I think I'm smack-dab in the middle of denial or shock, quite frankly. Or acceptance, with a whole buttload of anger thrown in for good measure. It's hard enough just being functional at work right now, and I feel like I'm not grieving enough. There should be more screaming, tearing of hair, and rending of clothes. All in public so that people know that we're all the poorer because of Mel's death.

I have to go now, but I'll be back later.

Thanks everyone. (occhi - wow, I'll have to read your comment when I get back) + hugs to 'pup.

(I swear, I'm addicted to serial posting...)

I read a lot of books about grieving when I was actively going through it, and most of them pissed me off. The only one I loved, and was helpful, was Going To Pieces Without Falling Apart. If you're of an Eastern philosophy bent at all, it might be helpful.

Everyone else has brilliant advice, all I would reinforce is that whatever you feel is legitimate and pain and suffering makes some odd feelings and notions come out and it's best to roll with them and not worry about what they mean in the grander scheme, be good to yourself and talk to people when you can. I'm sorry for your trouble.

Ooga, My email was returned with a failure notice.

I'm back! (Albeit briefly - I missed my train and have to catch the next one). goml - did you remove both "REMOVETHEPIRATE" and "THEPIRATE"? Sorry for the obtuseness of my address. I've sent you a quick note, too.

Occhi - thanks so much for the advice. I've already been in one situation which brought up bad memories, and that was this past Sunday evening which really started this week off on the wrong foot. Your link to the therapist search page was very helpful and there are some results it's returned which are promising.

M-Bean, that's a great picture of Mel that you have there. I spent an evening going through photos and I'm just sorry that I don't have more photos of Mel to remember her by. She would have loved your cat, though. When we first moved in together, there were three neighborhood cats which hung around our place. The first we named Bob because we thought she was a boy. The second one was named SisterCat because she was obviously Bob's sibling. Following our incredibly original naming scheme, we named the third one MamaCat because she was older and the other two treated her with deference and care.
Mama was very fond of sleeping under cars and the neighbor's car seeped oil like a Kuwaiti oil field, resulting in Mama being perpetually oily. Mama also had a tumor in her forehead, and one summer day we found her under our neighbor's car having a very difficult time breathing so we rushed her to the vet to see if we could do anything. The vet unfortunately disabused us of that notion, and as he administered the injection Mel was holding Mama, keeping her company and talking to her. As Mama cat died in her arms, Mel wept openly while cradling Mama's little body in her arms and kissing her, oblivious to all the motor oil she was getting on her clothes.

Mel told me once that she wanted to rescue all the little kitties in the world, and she certainly did try.

Ok, my ranting on & on was resent... My best thoughts are with you.

Thanks GOML, I'll look out for it.
Likewise, thanks Wino - I appreciate the advice and the thought.

Thanks again everyone - I gotta go (again!) but will be back later. Just talking with you guys about Mel has made things a lot easier today.

I'm very sorry to hear of your troubles, ooga. occhiblu's much better at this than I am, but I want you to know my thoughts are with you.

Woof. Thank you, everyone. I finally finished reading what everyone had to say and am very grateful for all the advice and sympathy. Like I said, today's much improved thanks to all of you, and I greatly appreciate the support.

On preview: That includes you, too, ikkyu2.

Sharing about your friend will help. But take care who you share with. Is there a bereavement counselling service in your area? Or a support group? You'll be with people who've been through the same thing.

After George died I talked a lot with people who'd been through the loss of a partner, but I found that people who hadn't had that experience, whilst being sympathetic, would kind of 'glaze over' after a minute or two and I learned not to talk about my grief with them.

essexjan, though similar experiences, I developed a theory that most people wanted to fit me into some paradigm of the brave little girl who loses her mother, sheds a single cinematic tear (which magically does not make her mascara run) while the music swells, and then vows to live each day the fullest... and then is over it and is available to go out drinking again.

Yeah, it's a bit weird, but it almost got funny after a while.

I just want to reinforce what occhiblu and others have said. You're going to go through this in your own and wholly unpredictable ways, and that is OK. It's your loss, and you can cope with it anyway you want or can.

Plus, I gave the impression that the grief will end. It may, but it probably will not. It's been 5 years since my loss and although I've stopped grieving, I still have moments when it all comes back to me. Things get easier, but possibly, you'll always miss the person who is gone.

essexjan - occhiblu's pointed me at the service which she volunteers with, but I'm still researching actual groups which are accessible to me given some of my (commute-related) restraints. I haven't yet experienced the "glazed-over" reaction from anyone, but then again I have only recently become comfortable talking about Mel's death, so I haven't shared my grief with too many people as yet. The story you shared in your AskMe thread about George taking the hospice patient morel hunting was very, very touching and I feel incredibly sorry for your loss.

seanyboy - one of the things which really struck that fact home to me was when I met with some of Mel's family and Mel's sister's girlfriend told me that the first year is the hardest. In that instant I realized that Mel will still be dead a year from now, two years from now, or for however much more time I have here Mel will still be gone. And I'll have to live with that. That realization broke my heart. Thank you for the words of encouragement.