Oh, anon, I am so sorry to hear that. I could give you hundreds of platitudes, but if you're anything like me you hate them, because they do nothing, help nothing. I'm really glad you're finding this has helped you, because I wrote this coming from my own experience of loss, so I wanted it to be very genuine.

When I was seventeen my mother passed away very suddenly and unexpectedly, and it left me in pretty much the emotional state you see Erik in above. It was very, very difficult, as I'm sure you know. It's been seven years now, and while I can't say that it stops hurting, because it doesn't - and I won't lie to you about that - what does happen is that after a while it stops being so raw and you scar over, a bit. You think about it less and you think about other things more. And after a while - months or years, it varies for different people - you start to be able to think of the person you lost without it automatically causing pain.

If I can help you with that in any small way that makes me very happy indeed, because grief is awful. All the love and support in the world, anon.