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Afterwards

Living with loss

Grief tends to arrive properly once the funeral is over and the telephone stops ringing — which is exactly when everybody else assumes you are through the worst of it.

What this section is

Everything on the rest of this site is administrative: forms, deadlines, fees, decisions. This section is about the part that goes on afterwards, when the administration is finished and the casseroles have stopped arriving.

Two things worth saying at the outset.

Grief usually gets harder before it gets easier. The week of the funeral has structure, company and things to do. What follows often does not, and a great many people are blindsided by finding week six worse than week one. Nothing has gone wrong when that happens.

The support that exists is free, national and available without a referral. You do not need a diagnosis, a GP letter, or to have reached some threshold of suffering. You ring a number or fill in a form. See where to get help .

The pages here

  • What grief actually feels like — the physical symptoms nobody warns you about, what the research actually says about stages, and the feelings people are ashamed of having.
  • The first year — what tends to happen and when, the firsts, the anniversary, and the practical decisions worth postponing.
  • Supporting someone who is grieving — what actually helps, what to say, what not to say, and what to do six months later when everybody else has gone quiet.
  • Children and grief — how children grieve differently at different ages, what words to use, and whether they should come to the funeral.
  • Where to get help — every free UK helpline and service, including the ones for particular kinds of loss.

The guide

Pages in this section

If you need to talk to somebody rather than read anything, where to get help lists every free national helpline in one place. They are answered by people trained in bereavement and you do not need a referral, a diagnosis or a reason.

  • There is no schedule

    Nothing about grief runs to a timetable, and you cannot be behind on it. Most people are still substantially affected well past the first year, which is ordinary rather than a warning sign.

  • It is physical as well

    Exhaustion, broken sleep, a chest that feels tight, an appetite that has gone, a memory that will not hold anything. Grief is a bodily event and people are rarely warned about that part.

  • Support is free and you can self-refer

    Bereavement services in the UK do not need a GP referral. You ring or fill in a form yourself, and there is no threshold of severity you have to reach first.

Questions people ask us most

How long does grief last?
There is no answer that fits everybody, and the honest one is: longer than the people around you will expect. Most people find the acute, disabling phase eases over the first year or two, but it does not end so much as change shape — it becomes something carried rather than something endured. Anniversaries, birthdays and entirely unpredictable moments bring it back sharply for years, and that is normal rather than a relapse.
Are there really five stages of grief?
Not in the way the phrase is used. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance in 1969, based on her work with people who were dying — not with the bereaved — and she never claimed they came in order or that everybody experienced all five. The model was popularised far beyond what the evidence supports. Grief researchers now describe something much more like oscillation: you move back and forth between confronting the loss and getting on with life, and that movement is what healthy grieving looks like.
Should I see a counsellor?
Bereavement counselling helps a great many people, and it is free from several national charities without any referral. It is worth considering if you are stuck, if you have nobody to talk to, if the death was sudden or traumatic, or simply if you want to. What the evidence does not support is that everybody who is bereaved needs counselling — most people recover with the support of the people around them, and being pushed into therapy you do not want is not helpful.
When is grief a medical problem?
Where it remains severe and disabling long after the loss — persistent intense longing or preoccupation, an inability to function, feeling that life is meaningless — it may be prolonged grief disorder, which is a recognised diagnosis in both ICD-11 and DSM-5-TR and which responds to specific treatment. Also see a GP if you are not sleeping at all, if you are drinking much more, or if you are having thoughts of harming yourself. None of that is a failure of grieving; it is a reason to get help that exists.
Is there any bereavement leave from work in the UK?
Less than most people assume. Employees have a right to reasonable unpaid time off to deal with an emergency involving a dependant, which covers arranging a funeral. Statutory Parental Bereavement Leave — two weeks, paid — applies to parents who lose a child under 18 or suffer a stillbirth after 24 weeks. Beyond that, paid compassionate leave is at the employer’s discretion, though many are more generous than the law requires. Ask HR what the policy is rather than assuming there is none.

You do not have to work this out in one sitting

Very little has to be done on the first day, and almost nothing has to be decided tonight. Start with the step-by-step guide, and if you need a person rather than a page, the helplines are free and answered by people who do this every day.

Start with the first steps Where to get help