Grief does not run to anybody else's timetable

The work

The casseroles stop long before the grief does

For about a month, people are extraordinary. They ring, they turn up, they bring food. Then life resumes for everybody else, and you are left in a house that is the wrong shape, being asked how you are by people who need the answer to be fine.

Month four is often harder than week two. By then the practical business is done, the funeral is over, the admin is finished, and there is nothing left to organise. That is frequently when people first think about counselling, and often the same moment they decide they should be coping by now.

There is no schedule. Counselling here is not about getting you over it or helping you move on, phrases which mostly serve the comfort of everyone else. It is about having somewhere to put it down for an hour, and working out how to carry something that does not get smaller.

Loss that does not get sympathy

Plenty of real grief comes with no funeral and no acknowledgement. It is no less heavy for that, and it is often lonelier:

• A miscarriage, or a pregnancy that did not continue, that other people never knew about
• A relationship ending, including one you chose to end
• A parent who is still alive but is no longer the person you knew
• Estrangement, where the person exists and is simply not in your life
• Losing health, or work, or the future you had assumed you would get
• A pet, which people minimise and which is often a genuine bereavement
• Leaving a country, a community or a faith

When grief and depression overlap

They look similar from the outside and they are not the same thing. Grief comes in waves and usually still allows moments of connection. Depression is flatter and more constant. Sometimes both are present, particularly where the loss was sudden, traumatic, or where the relationship was complicated. Sorting out which is which changes what actually helps.

If the relationship was difficult, or you feel relief alongside the sorrow, that is not a shameful thing to admit. Complicated grief is common and it is much heavier when it has to stay unsaid.