After the Loss

The first week after a loss is loud. Then everyone goes home and it gets very quiet. This guide is for the quiet part — both the practical work and the work nobody can do for you.

The first 72 hours

• Get the official pronouncement. If death was at home and not under hospice, call 911. Under hospice, call the hospice nurse — not 911.

• Choose a funeral home. Prices vary wildly; you are allowed to ask for an itemized price list under federal law (the FTC Funeral Rule).

• Notify immediate family. Resist the urge to post publicly until you have.

• Care for the body of the living: eat something, drink water, sleep when you can.

The first two weeks

• Order 10–15 certified death certificates.

• Notify Social Security (their funeral home can usually do this).

• Notify the employer and any pension administrators.

• Notify the three credit bureaus to flag the account against identity theft.

• Find the will. Contact the named executor. Contact an estate attorney if needed.

• Cancel: subscriptions, automatic payments not needed, the cell phone after you've downloaded photos and messages.

• Keep: their email account active for at least a year. You will need it for accounts you didn't know existed.

What not to do

• Don't make any big decision in the first six months — selling the house, quitting the job, moving in with someone, big purchases. Your brain is not yours yet.

• Don't pay debts out of your own pocket. Debts are the estate's problem, in a specific legal order.

• Don't throw anything away for a year if you can help it. Grief moves in tides; you'll want some of it back.

Grief, honestly

Grief is not a process with stages you pass through. It's a relationship with absence that changes shape over time. Some weeks you'll feel like yourself. Then a song plays in a grocery store and you have to sit in your car. Both are normal. Both will keep happening, less often, for a long time.

Get a therapist who specializes in grief. Join a group. The Dougy Center, GriefShare, and most hospice organizations run free ones. The single best predictor of healthy grieving is talking about the person — by name — with people who knew them.

When grief turns into something else

If, after six months, you cannot function — can't work, can't get out of bed, can't eat — that's complicated grief or depression and it's treatable. Talk to a doctor. You are not failing at grief. You are a person who needs help, like a person with pneumonia needs antibiotics.