This practice helped me cope the first few weeks. My friend Mae Lee, who’d recently lost her new husband, introduced me to the grief jar before I knew I’d need it myself in a few months. It involves a large jar or vase, pre-cut slips of papers and willingness to write down unflinchingly every “What if…” and “If only…” piece of bargaining we can catch plus each splinter of shrapnel we can dislodge of the normal intrusive thoughts, regrets, anger, guilt, shame, shock, denial, even relief. All of this is too much for us to hold, so we need to give it over to some thing/Thing else to hold it for us. One day we may wish to ceremonially burn the contents, even in the jar, should we ever be ready. Or to write other perspectives on the other side of the slip in different colored ink. For example, if on one side I'd written "If only I hadn't given him a hard time when he'd gotten mad about cooking dinner that night, maybe he'd still be alive," on the other side I could one day go back and write, "The wise part of me knows there's nothing I could have done differently to make him stay since his death is within his circle, and outside my control." Or with "What kind of mother can admit that I won't miss the pain of how hard he'd push us away, when we were just trying to help and love him, even though now he's dead?" on the other side I could one day write, "I am brave and wise enough to honor how complicated my feelings are about my son's death, and feel ALL the feelings the whole way through."