Faith Does Help Mourners Survive Their Loss,

A Mother Is The Portal By Which You Enter The World.

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.

Nothing Prepared Me For The Loss Of My Mother. Even Knowing That She Would Die Did Not Prepare Me.

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.

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.