Btw, if you have not had tragedy dropped on you before, grief does fuck you up in unexpected and physical ways. If you can’t sleep or sleep more than expected or have more or reduced appetite, or energy goes weird— your brain just had a bunch of emotions dropped on it and sometimes it reacts by hitting every button in your brain. It will pass. Just try to not get too frustrated with yourself.
It’s also fine if you feel normal. Grief literally hits everybody differently, and some people are made to be able to to keep the farm going the day after a death, and some of us turn into sleepless gargoyles and get really into trying to help, and some of us are just unspeakably sad. Grief is weird. Be kind to yourself.
Something else I want to say is that grief is cyclical. It is very common to go "why am I just a wreck today/this week" and then you check the calandar and see that something awful happened at this time last year. Or a couple years ago. Or a decade ago (my decembers are a wash every year).
So if you find yourself having memory issues or unaccountably grumpy or anxious for no reason or however it hits you, be gentle with yourself.
