The markers, and none of them is about your faith

Most people carrying a loss do not need any of what follows. A minority do, and for them this is the lesson that matters.

You are thinking about ending your life, or about joining the person who died.

You are not eating, or not sleeping, or not able to keep yourself safe.

Months have gone by and you cannot do the ordinary things at all. Not on a good day. Not on any day.

You cannot accept that they have died, in a way that is changing how you live.

You are avoiding everything that reminds you, until your life has shrunk down around the avoidance.

You are drinking or using something to get through the day.

The death was violent, or sudden, or by suicide, or you saw it.

Images of the death arrive without warning and will not stop.

The first one and the last one do not wait. Thoughts of ending your life mean telling somebody today. Images that arrive on their own go straight to a clinician, not to another lesson.