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sunlit_musicHello everyone,
I saved this post as one of my favourites. Worth checking out. even if you are religious, it has invaluable advice on how anyone can cope with grief and loss:
http://community.livejournal.com/atheism/2181004.html
The post has information targeted at how agnostics and atheists can deal with grief and help anyone else who is grieving.
Best advice (in my opinion - although most of the advice was helpful):
I honour their life, talk about them and remember them. Comfort their family, and help out where I can.
When my best friend died this year - friends who had not seen each other in a decade gathered to share memories, put his ashes in the ground (no "moving on to better places" - but many teary hugs). We expressed regrets at distance over the years in a group. We drank to a good man (the night before the service, the day after, and the following night).
We honored the death (and his life) in a public/communal way to begin mourning
About the worst thing you can do when someone dies is try to forget them. Because you will remember, but the less you do, the more it will hurt and the longer it will take to stop.
In my experience, "get over it" is code for "stop whining". Other people don't have your feelings for people. They can and should grieve in their own way and in their own time. Trying to rush people through it is cruel. If they spend the rest of their lives in mourning, so be it.
What's healthy in mourning is to take your own time dealing with things, neither trying to put on too strong a face nor cowering in fear because it's too hard to deal with.
Although I'm not religious, I disagree with one of the posters saying that tacking on a religious message to someone's death cheapens it.
I saved this post as one of my favourites. Worth checking out. even if you are religious, it has invaluable advice on how anyone can cope with grief and loss:
http://community.livejournal.com/atheism/2181004.html
The post has information targeted at how agnostics and atheists can deal with grief and help anyone else who is grieving.
Best advice (in my opinion - although most of the advice was helpful):
I honour their life, talk about them and remember them. Comfort their family, and help out where I can.
When my best friend died this year - friends who had not seen each other in a decade gathered to share memories, put his ashes in the ground (no "moving on to better places" - but many teary hugs). We expressed regrets at distance over the years in a group. We drank to a good man (the night before the service, the day after, and the following night).
We honored the death (and his life) in a public/communal way to begin mourning
About the worst thing you can do when someone dies is try to forget them. Because you will remember, but the less you do, the more it will hurt and the longer it will take to stop.
In my experience, "get over it" is code for "stop whining". Other people don't have your feelings for people. They can and should grieve in their own way and in their own time. Trying to rush people through it is cruel. If they spend the rest of their lives in mourning, so be it.
What's healthy in mourning is to take your own time dealing with things, neither trying to put on too strong a face nor cowering in fear because it's too hard to deal with.
Although I'm not religious, I disagree with one of the posters saying that tacking on a religious message to someone's death cheapens it.
