Carrying a lossStep 1 of 8

Before you read on

Read this first. Some losses need a person and not a course. If you are thinking about ending your life, or about joining the person who died, tell somebody today and treat it as urgent. If the death was violent, sudden, by your own witnessing, or by suicide, or if images of it arrive without warning and will not stop, that goes to a clinician now rather than to a lesson, because this course does not do that work and will not attempt it. The same applies if you are not eating or sleeping, if you cannot keep yourself safe, or if you are drinking or using something to get through the day. This course is written for adults. A bereaved child needs different help, from someone who works with children.

Lesson 3 of 6

The thing that gets said at funerals

Be patient. Do not cry, it disturbs the dead. Crying is a complaint against the decree. Where is your faith.

It gets said with good intentions, at the worst possible moment, by people who are frightened by your face. And it does specific damage, because a person who believes it will hold their breath through the one part of this that everybody needs to do.

What follows is what the Qur'an and the sound reports actually contain. It is not a small correction.