Grief after a death: what is normal, and how long it lasts

In the weeks after a death, many people quietly wonder whether what they feel is normal. The crying that comes out of nowhere in the grocery store. The nights without sleep. The anger they didn’t expect. This note describes what grief usually looks like, how it tends to change with time, and the signs that it may be time to ask for more support. It draws on the National Cancer Institute’s review of the research on grief.

What grief can feel like

Right after a death, especially an unexpected one, many people feel numb, shocked or unable to believe it happened.¹ That numbness can last days or weeks, and it often lifts slowly, which is when the harder feelings arrive.

Grief shows up in the body and the mind. Crying and sighing, trouble sleeping, tiredness, guilt, anger and a loss of interest in things that used to matter are all common.¹ Some people dream about the person who died, or for a moment think they hear or see them.¹ Many people go looking for places and things that remind them of the person. None of this means something is wrong.

Grief comes in waves

Most people don’t feel grief as one steady weight. It comes in brief, intense waves, often lasting 20 to 30 minutes, and then eases.¹ Waves are often set off by reminders: a song, a smell, a birthday, a holiday, the anniversary of the death.¹ Knowing a wave will pass can make it easier to ride out.

How long grief lasts

There is no schedule for grief, and the research doesn’t agree on one.¹ What the studies do show is a pattern. For most people the hardest feelings peak in the first months and begin to soften after about six months, and most people adapt to the loss within one to two years.¹ Softening is not forgetting. Many people carry their grief for the rest of their lives, in a form they can live with.

Somewhere between half and most people who lose someone go through this kind of grief, painful but gradually easing.¹ If that’s you, you are grieving the way most people grieve.

What helps

Sleep, food and some movement each day matter more than they seem to. So does company: people who let others in tend to do better than people who carry it alone. Say yes when someone offers to bring dinner or sit with you. Tell people what you need. They often want to help and don’t know how.

Expect hard days around the dates that mattered: the birthday, the holidays, the first anniversary. Plan them a little. Some families keep a tradition, some start a new one, some simply decide who they’ll spend the day with.

When to ask for more help

For some people grief doesn’t soften. Doctors call this prolonged grief, and it is recognized as a condition that can be treated.² Signs include an intense longing for the person, or thoughts of them that crowd out everything else, nearly every day, more than a year after the death, along with trouble going back to ordinary life.² Our note on prolonged grief explains it in more detail.

Talk to your doctor sooner if you can’t sleep or eat for weeks, if you’re relying on alcohol or pills to get through the day, or if you can’t do the things you need to do. If you have thoughts of ending your life, call or text 988 at any hour.³

If your loved one was on hospice

Hospice doesn’t end with a death. Medicare requires hospices to offer bereavement support to the family for up to a year afterward.⁴ At HealthView our bereavement team stays in touch with families for thirteen months, through the first anniversary. If you’d like to talk to someone, call us. You don’t need a reason.