Exactly - no one can tell someone else how to grieve. I certainly can't. But ignoring it isn't dealing - it's ignoring.

I'm going to deal by getting off my butt and finally learning to knit, and making stuff from some of the fabric that Clay passed on to me, and maybe I'll get a little Winnie The Pooh thingie to add to the tchotchkes on my shelves. And maybe I can bring myself to finally sit through 'A Christmas Story' - because like I said at the service 'Sorry hon, but I STILL don't think 'Napoleon Dynamite' is funny.'

I wore a ring of Janet's every day for a year after she died, I added more purple to my wardrobe, and I still have her weird-ass stuffed monster-thing in my living room and it makes me smile. I sew on my grandmother's sewing machine. I'm still here and I've made my losses part of me as well.