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Losing a loved one is possibly the most heartbreaking and traumatic experience we will have to go through in our life - it is arguably the one experience that you can't type up a 'five easy tips to overcome...' article about. Time is a great healer though, and as the grief subsides we often emerge from the experience a wiser, more grounded person.

1. Make the most of the time we have.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
- Steve Jobs

In today's world with its vast knowledge of medical science, we are rarely exposed to the realities of death and our own mortality at a young age, and we often live our life as if we have infinite time at our disposal, putting off achieving our hopes and dreams to some indefinite time in the future. However, when someone we know passes on, we look at the time we have left on earth, and suddenly it doesn't feel like all that much at all.

Often it takes something as death to make us realise what is truly important in life. That argument you had that led you not speaking to that person for years, or those worries over money or who does or doesn't like you - it all seems so petty now. This keen awareness of death can be a powerful catalyst to look at your life and give priority to the things that truly matter. Most people want their loved ones to go on living life after they have departed the mortal coil; we can pay tribute to their memory by seizing every day and living it to the full.

2. Widening our heart.

“When the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box”
- Italian Proverb

For some people, grieving can be a very isolating experience. However after the pain has lessened, it can often leave us with a valuable window into the human condition.

Every day, all around this tiny globe, people who have lost a loved one are undergoing this very same experience around this tiny globe of ours; it is something that affects us regardless of income or status. Death is indeed a great leveller, a great humbler, a remover of such arbitrary notions as inferiority or inferiority. Where beforehand we might have seen some of our fellow human beings in terms of stereotypes of class or culture, we are now more inclined to see them as like ourselves, just making their way through life as best we know how, and we become more accepting of any mistakes they might make along the way.

Often modern living can bring the narrow self-centered part of our being to the fore, and push our basic goodness into the background. When something like a death happens, people come together in the most touching and heartfelt way. It is then we truly see the stuff that human beings are truly made of: kindness, sympathy and largeness of heart.

3. An experience of the beyond.

Because I could not stop for Death --
He kindly stopped for me --
The Carriage held but just Ourselves --
And Immortality.
- Emily Dickinson

The shock of no longer having your dear ones around in the physical body is a powerful and sometimes insurmountable one. But for people who are open to the idea that there is an eternal part of our being that persists long after the passing of the physical body, the death of a loved one can be a powerful confirmation of that belief. Every culture in the world has at least some aspect of it that deals with an eternal aspect to man, and those who are in tune with that eternal aspect can often feel it in their loved ones even after they depart the body.

"At the present state of human evolution, to conquer Death may be an impossibility. But to overcome the fear of death is not only practicability, but inevitability.", writes meditation teacher Sri Chinmoy, who himself passed away very recently in October 2007. When we go beyond the limits of human thought and enter into the silence within ourselves, we sense that in the recesses of our hearts, there is a part of ourselves beyond birth and death, and this discovery considerably reduces our apprehensions about what lies on the other side of that wall separating living and dying. And when we use our hearts, we find that the bond of love which held us together with our dear ones on earth is still as strong and meaningful as ever now that they are no longer with us.

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