It is folly to tear one’s hair in sorrow, as if grief could be assuaged by baldness.

Grief has a shape of its own, and nothing you do to yourself shortens it. The impulse to punish the body, to go without, to make some outward show equal to the inward loss is understandable and does not work, because the sorrow is not watching the gesture. What helps is slower and duller than that. Time, food, sleep, and people who stay.

If you are in it, let the ordinary things go on being done, by you or for you. You do not owe anyone a visible demonstration of how much this cost. The grief is already proof of the love and does not need adding to.