When we mourn

When I wrote this, a friend of mine had just lost her father. And I was reminded of the losses in my life and others, and how people try to cope with them.

And we don't know how to cope, I don't think. We find grief and death uncomfortable, because it's a reminder of our own mortality and the mortality of those we love. We don't live in a world full of death anymore. People still die, but they are "supposed" to do it in a hospital bed when they're old. When it's sudden, when it is someone young .. whenever we're not expecting it, it hits us as a shock to the system. Something that's "wrong".

The problem is, death is a natural part of life. There must be an end for life to have meaning. People that refuse to grieve get locked into a weird place where they can't move forward, because they haven't accepted that the person is gone. But if you do grieve, people avoid you as though death and grief might be catching.

Questions:
Have I ever felt a time I couldn't grieve? Thankfully, I haven't ever been in that situation. I don't know what I would do if I was.

How do I deal with someone that is grieving? Very awkwardly, because I don't know what they need. I try to not close the person out, though, and to simply be there. I tend to make awkward humor, because I hate seeing people in pain, but I'm not sure that's a good reaction.

What is a good reaction societally? I think there needs to be space. I don't think there should be a society-standard reaction, because everyone is different, but I do think there needs to be some space .. and maybe something where a month after the death, there is a renewed reachout to the person. We reach out at the time of the death, but then never again .. and I think there needs to be a second or third reachout for the person, so they don't feel so alone when they start to come out of it.