Allison,

I have been reading this thread regularly and it is helping me in the way that I think and feel about my mother's sudden death early last year.

I know, because I have experienced it so many times, that the people we love who have passed over do come back to visit and share their love.

My Mum took a lot longer to come and visit than many other people I have known, but now I do feel her presence around me at times.

Your experience at the concert when Byron visited you is beautiful. He will probably start showing up fairly regularly, but it often happens that there is an early visit and then a gap of three or more months before the visits become more regular. I believe that this is the "recovery" time when they lose their earthly and physical troubles and recover to the spiritual state we all started with. "Shuffling off the mortal coil" perhaps.

It is now, after the initial period of shock and grief is wearing off, that you need support. I agree about what pdc said:

"So many people are utterly inept at expressing themselves, or are so awkward about dealing with death, that they may avoid you as they simply don't know what to say or do. I had a lot of resentment about that fact for a while, but them remembered how I had treated people who had suffered a loss to death, and realized that until it happened to me, I had had no idea of how to deal with it either."

I was the same. I had never experienced the unexpected death of someone close until my Mum died, so I felt inept in relating to other people who were grieving. But I also discovered that it is the time months after when the full impact hits of the loss of day-to-day contact that I really needed more support. By then, most people had put it into the past and I did not want to "burden" them with my grief.

Please, whenever you need to talk about Byron, and your feelings about his passing, and also your feelings of joy about your life together, always know that we are here to listen and share with you.

This is one of the songs we sang at Mum's funeral, and it says so much for me about how I feel. I know I post this a lot but it helped me to feel that hope.

Helen


Whispering Hope
(Septimus Winner a.k.a. Alice Hawthorne)

Soft as the voice of an Angel
Breathing a lesson unheard
Hope with a gentle persuasion
Whispers her comforting word

Wait, till the darkness is over
Wait, till the tempest is done
Hope for the sunshine tomorrow
After the shower is gone

Whispering hope
Oh, how welcome thy voice
Making my heart
In its sorrow rejoice

If in the dusk of the twilight
Dim be the region afar
Will not the deepening darkness
Brighten the glimmering star
Then, when the night is upon us
Why should the heart sink away
When the dark midnight is over
Watch for the breaking of day

Whispering hope
Oh, how welcome thy voice
Making my heart
In its sorrow rejoice