After you bury your husband, for a long long time, maybe longer, you will feel like crap. But later than sooner, you will be okay. You will get through. Here are 7 essential tips to guide you:

1. Comb your hair, brush your teeth, and for goodness sakes, take out the trash. If there are two things that will make you feel worse, it is a bad hair day and a parade of creepy crawly things marching across your kitchen floor.

2. Drink water. No, you will not feel hungry. And, it is okay to skip a meal, or two, or three. But, drink water. Keep hydrated. It is important to keep your kidneys flush.

Has fear of the unknown frozen you so that you are hesitant to make much needed decisions? Or, has thinking about the future and how you are going to manage without your loved one brought great anxiety? Fear of the unknown is among the most common, and most difficult, grief-related issues to deal with.

Why is this so? Simply because uncertainty is an integral part of life that is ignored by most until it forces us to confront it. Then we have to take a stand when we are in an anxiety-filled frame of mind. The choice becomes: either learn to live one day at a time (perhaps one minute at a time) or allow the unknown to fill us with crippling fear and freeze us. So what can we do to deal with fear of the future, the unknown?

Have you been taught to “keep a stiff upper lip” at all times and keep your emotions to yourself? Or were you admonished as a child when you began to cry with this overzealous parental statement: “You want something to cry about; I’ll give you something to cry about?”

Most of us have been taught that crying is a sign of weakness. Furthermore, if you are going to “break down” (what a terrible demoralizing statement) we are directed to do it in privacy, never in public.

Linking objects are literally any type of physical object or an image that connects a mourner in a comforting way with a deceased loved one. They can also be used to create a ritual of remembrance or continuity as well as a reminder of a needed behavior when establishing new routines.

The use of linking objects is not widely recommended because many support persons falsely believe they tend to encourage a pathological holding on to the deceased while neglecting to face the task of reinvesting in life. In reality, linking objects can be pivotal motivating factors in accepting the death of a loved one and beginning the new life without the physical presence of the beloved.

Death is a natural occurrence, a passageway. When we can accept human death as another cycle of life, we can enjoy our daily lives more because we won’t be in fear. Then we can also gracefully release others who are dying.

I often hear people say that they lost their mother, father, or another person in their lives. I can feel their pain when they express the transition in that way. I have compassion for their feelings. To assist them to feel better, I suggest that they just state what happened. For example, “My mother passed away last month.” I also encourage them to close their eyes and speak to them. They are often pleased and comforted when they receive an intuitive response.

It’s a dark and stormy night, November 11, 2000. The Saw Mill River Parkway is an asp of a road that snakes to a narrow hollow in front of Reader’s Digest. A speeding motorist cuts sharp right, forcing a driver to lose control of his car. The 25-year young driver isn’t wearing a seat belt. And as the motorist disappears into the shadows, the Pontiac flips and rolls like a dime. Its driver rockets out a side window, 40’ through the air, into a tree.

Whatever the age a person is when he/she dies, those who loved him/her will experience grief. That grief will come in many forms-anger, sadness, loneliness, relief, guilt and many other emotions or combinations of all of the above.

There are different names we can put to the ceremony where we pay tribute to that person: funeral, memorial, celebration of life. But whatever we name it and however it is done, grief will be a part of it.

Traditionally, funerals were held in a church and were attended by entire communities and large extended families. The church minister, priest, rabbi or pastor would lead the service. Today, there are still many funerals that follow this more traditional way of saying goodbye.