Dear Megan,

It is never easy for anyone to deal with the death of a loved one, especially a parent. You are entitled to cope with this challenge in your own way.

It is not unusual for the grief process to take time to simply accept that our loved one is gone. In fact the first stage of grief is denial, which means difficulty accepting the fact that they have died. So what you are going through is normal. It is only after working through the denial, anger, depression, and other emotions that we can finally reach some level of acceptance. There is a great resource in most communities that provides counseling and support for those who are struggling with the death of a loved one called Hospice. Information about local support groups can be found online at Grief Net (http://www.griefnet.org) for adults and for children at KIDSAID (http://www.kidsaid.com).

In terms of your well-intending friends wanting to talk to you about it, you may want to let them know that you appreciate their concern but it’s just something that you’re not ready to talk about yet. Ask them if it would be OK to seek them out if/when you are ready to talk.

Keep in mind that, while it will be difficult to talk about at first and deal with the emotions that follow, it will be necessary to do so eventually as part of the healing process that you will need to go through to move forward in your life.