When death hits a family there are generally three stages in the process of recovery.  Maybe just knowing the three stages will help.  I'd like to share them with you, in case you need them right now.  First of all there's shock.  During the first few hours, and in fact the first few days after someone you love dies.  Those left behind are dazed, are numbed.  And that's perhaps, well perhaps, natures way of helping us over the trying time.  Crying is a safety valve and it should be popped.  When death comes never restrain crying, it always helps.  Probably one of the most difficult things during this first phase will come when the family returns home from the cemetery and are there all by themselves.  You see, up to that point they've been surrounded by relatives and close friends, and sympathizers.  But most of those peoples by this time will have returned to the land of the living.  And it’s the immediate family that must - for the first time perhaps - be alone with their grief.  And its then they really begin to hurt.

Next comes the suffering stage:  depression, gloom, withdrawal and often a sense of guilt.  In many ways, this is the most difficult stage of all.  Sometimes a widow or widower may even become so completely withdrawn and depressed that person gives up on living and wants to die himself.  It's during this period that folks often feel guilty about wrongs, real or imagined, which that person has done to the one who died.  Or maybe that person is thinking about what he could have done, such as changing doctors, or hospitals in order to take better care of the one lost.  In other words, he begins to punish himself.  Maybe you're in that phase right now.  And if that's what you're doing, think about this.  Surely the one you lost would not want you to feel that way.  In fact he'd probably be greatly disappointed if he knew how you are treating yourself because of him.  So don't do it.  Jump right into this third stage.

This one is the recovery stage.  It’s during this one, that we re-enter life.  It’s no dishonor to the dead for us to do so.  Start living again yourself.  Actually to do it is a sign that you did have a really health and loving relationship in the first place.

There seems to always be an abundance of people with bushels of advice to those who are grieving over the death of a wife or husband.  Some of the advice would be good; some of it is a basket of trash.  Some well-intentioned friend comes along and says to get out and find you a man, or woman, as the case may be.  Some will even be more willing to find one for you.  Such people, I'm convinced should mind their own business, but they won't.  Probably the best way you can handle them is to tell them kindly that this is a very personal matter and that the decision will be yours and yours alone to make.  And if that doesn't work, tell them plainly, but kindly to mind their own business.  Death has no advantage over a person except when it comes as a stranger.  In other words, be ready for it to hit as best you can, because it’s going to come in all our lives.