The weeks after the funeral

The funeral is the last event with a date, and for most people the morning after it is when the loss actually arrives. The arrangements are done, the relatives have gone home, the phone stops ringing, and there is a day in front of you with nothing in it. This guide is what those weeks usually hold, from the people who have been through them, and what to do with the days.

The morning after

Most people describe it as quiet, and flat, and strange. The adrenaline that carried you through the fortnight of arrangements is gone, and what is under it is tiredness of a kind sleep does not fix. The house is full of the funeral: flowers, cards, food, a suit over a chair. Do not tidy it all today. Eat something, go outside for half an hour, and let the day be nothing much. Coping with grief in the first weeks is written for exactly this point.

The small practical things

The flowers: keep the cards, give the flowers to a hospice or a care home, or let them die in the house, as you prefer. The cards: read them, keep them, and know that thank-you notes are a custom and not a duty; a single message to everyone is fine, and so is none. The order of service: keep a few. The leftover food: give it away. The suit: hang it up. None of this needs doing today, and someone who has asked what they can do could do all of it.

The paperwork that can wait, and the one thing that cannot

Tell Us Once, the government service, runs on a reference number that lasts 28 days from the registration, and it is the one thing in the weeks after the funeral with a clock on it; how Tell Us Once works is a half-hour job. Everything else, the banks, the pensions, the probate, the will, can be done in short sessions over months, and what to do when someone dies puts it in order with the deadlines marked. An executor who does half an hour a day is doing enough.

The silence when everyone has gone

The third and fourth weeks are the ones the bereaved describe as loneliest. The people who came to the funeral have gone back to their lives and stopped asking, and this is when you may find yourself telling the story of the death to the postman. One friend who keeps turning up is worth more now than a houseful was on the day, and it is all right to ask someone to be that friend: “Could you ring me on Sundays for a bit?” is a request people are glad to get.

What to do with the days

Something small and regular. A walk at the same time each morning. A meal made rather than reheated. Work, if you are ready and it will have you back at your own pace. Not the big things: not the house, not the wardrobe, not the decisions that cannot be undone. The urge to do something enormous with the energy is common and the regret is common too.

The things people are not prepared for

The waves, which come without warning for months, set off by a song or a smell. The anger, at the hospital, at a sibling, at the person for dying. The forgetting, for a moment, and then the remembering. The dreams. The first time you laugh and feel guilty for it. All of this is grief and all of it is described in how long does grief last, month by month, so that when it arrives it is recognisable.

Their things

There is no timetable for the wardrobe, the shed, the phone. Some people clear a room in a week and some keep a coat on a hook for years, and both are right. Do it when you want to and with someone you choose, and not because a relative thinks it is time.

When it is more than the quiet

If, weeks after the funeral, you are not eating or sleeping, not managing the house, not leaving it, or drinking to get through, that is the sign, and when to get bereavement counselling, and where to find it in the UK is the page. Most people do not need it. Some do, and the weeks after the funeral are when it shows.