Grieving after a death is a process which is different for everyone. Grief may hit your straight away or never. What happens to you is your personal grief journey and there is absolutely no point in beating yourself up about it. When suicide is involved it is probably wise to start thinking about getting some help early – pretty much everyone is going to feel guilty.

Many people bury themselves in something – work, family, dealing with the estate – as a way of filling their time up to avoid grieving. That may or may not be a good idea. Sometime the problems come up a long time later and may not even be recognised as issues arising from the bereavement.

Children need particular care but we are not the ones to go into detail on that. Like adults, they may be fine, they may take the death of a parent or adult they were especially close to very hard. Or they may just consider a natural part of life – who knows. Worth keeping in touch with school to see if behaviour their changes.

Bereavement Counselling.

There are lots of local grief counselling services in most areas, but probably the best known is Cruse Bereavement Care who have worked with the Samaritans to start addressing the particular issues of bereavement caused by suicide.

Click the link for The Cruse Bereavement Care website: it is well worth a visit. We should also mention that it is part of an employers duties to consider the mental well being of staff. And it is common sense that staff badly affected by bereavement are not going to be effective, and treating them badly could end up with an Industrial Tribunal. Best avoided!

The National Health Service also has some very useful grief counselling facilities.

Specialist grief counselling services are signposted at The Child Bereavement Network.

This site is a commercial directory of counsellors, and this is a link to their grief counsellors directory.

Grieving over the death of a child.

Something every parent fears, so it can be devastating if it happens to you – whether they are young or grown up, it is still unnatural. As Together for Short Lives says “No one can anticipate quite how they will feel or react after the death of their child; most people describe a ‘rollercoaster’ of emotions, ranging from numbness to furious anger, profound sadness to perhaps a certain relief. People find their own ways of getting through the early days.”

Their mission is to help families whose children have life threatening or life limiting issues, so well worth a visit if you know anyone with such concerns.

Hub page for grieving.

As part of the digital estate, Facebook is becoming increasingly important as more and more people are leaving a substantial online legacy, some of which is very valuable from a personal or financial viewpoint.

Digital Estate – storing the details.

Digital Estate – Facebook and photos

Gone are the old family photograph albums, replace by digital photographs hosted in the cloud (online) such as Facebook or on local computers or hard drives. These are not assets you would wish to be deleted without considerable thought as they are irreplaceable parts of family history. Facebook is currently the most common online photo album, but there are hundreds.

What to do with a Facebook account after death

Facebook offers three options for the account of a deceased person:1. Downloading the contents – for which they require a Court order – presumably a Grant of Probate would be acceptable.2. Memorialise the account which effectively means it stays online in a less active format.3. Deleting the account is an option for the executor, and close family members but it may, like option 1, mean that a Grant of Probate is needed where that would not have been the case otherwise. We would caution executors about the final nature of deleting an account when other family members may wish to have copies of photos: deletion could well be the provocation needed for an expensive Court battle, so we would strongly suggest memorialisation or at least downloading the contents so it can be made privately available to family members.The relevant Facebook page for special requests from family members.Facebook Memorialisation and other options.

How to appoint a Facebook “Executor” or Legacy Contact.