All of us at one time or another have felt grief: perhaps over a lost job, lost love, or the most heartbreaking, the death of someone we loved dearly. Each of us goes about the task of grieving in our own distinct way.

When my son died, I wrote. It saved me. However everything I composed in my journal and computer files was not to be seen by the world. While it was important to me because it was either my raw guts spilled forth or memories of my four-year-old whose laughter echoed down the hospital corridors, it was not what poetry magazines wished to publish.

Recently I reread some of my poems from five years ago. My stomach filled with queasiness. Now I understood why editors rejected my work. My pain was clear, but I could see the blood on the pages

Bereavement is the state people experience when someone or something they love tremendously, is taken away. Humans, as varied as we are, experience and react to loss differently. Most of the time, the first reaction is crying while for others it is not. It may take a period of months, even years for some to overcome the grief of loss while it does not take as long for others. Dealing with it, which is accepting the fact that you suffered a huge loss is unpleasant and most people live in denial. Over time, people do manage to overcome the pain and grief of loss. However, it takes time.

When you lose a loved one, the best thing you can do is, seek out others who can empathize with your grief. Why is it that we don't always easily move through the healing of grief? Many experts call this complicated grief or feeling, we just can't move on. The symptoms and consequences of complicated grief can be distant and at times destructive. So it's important to look at our grief, and examine whether or not there might be some issues in need of attention and help.

When a parent passes away, a link to the past is lost; when a spouse passes away, a link to the present is gone; but when a child passes away, a link to the future is departed. An inescapable part of life is loss, and grief, a natural progression for healing. The parent-child relationship is physically, socially, and psychologically unique among all other human relationships. They must learn to rebuild their life without their beloved child.

Grief is the universal reaction to loss. It is afflictive and stressful, but also natural, and incumbent. Bereavement is the period after a loss, during which grief is experienced and mourning occurs. The time spent during the period of bereavement depends on how attached the person was to the deceased, and how much time was spent to anticipate the loss. There are no right or wrong reactions to death. Reactions and sensibility can change from day to day. Over time, the emotional swings will lessen in intensity as you learn to adapt to your changed circumstances, but to begin with it can be hard. You might wish to avoid such difficult feelings, like shock, disbelief, guilt, regret, injustice, anger, loneliness and depression but for the process of healing to occur, the pain has to be experienced and expressed. These are perceivable reactions to the bereavement process. They will lessen and eventually disappear, given time, support and sympathy.