That's awful, Shelagh..so sorry. It sounds like it might have been unexpected too. To echo what Mike said, when you're over here, if you feel like making contact with me and Moley, please do. (We're a bit out of your way up here in Liverpool - but lower down you said you had roots here, so I thought I'd mention it, just in case.)
I'll be back in a week or so. Many thanks for your kind thoughts! Thanks, too, for the kind offers from the UK contingent--to call you whilst there. I'll have to see how things play out--but it's great, just knowing that's an option! I feel I have real friends here! My sister (Anne) would have loved you guys!
Grief is the price we pay for love, and in my opinion it's a good deal!
You are facing a really intense time which, along with the shock and the sadness, can be full of beauty and enrichment and enlightenment. I know you will celebrate her life, and that is the best thing you can do for her, and also the best you can do for you.
But don't forget to grieve. Give yourself the space. You need that too. To really feel it. You need that.
So many times I think I don't like the fact, that we have to go one day, it appears to me always somehow unreal, it's a mysterium, but we have to deal with and on a deeper level we can handle those sad facts.