Coping with death

[Angrboda]

I lost friends when I was rather young (in kindergarten, 3rd, 5th and 6th grades), but I don't consciously know how that affected me.

I don't have any evidence for the following, but it's what I believe. Grief is very individual. Everybody grieves differently, and each grief is distinct. I don't believe that the beliefs in an afterlife are any solace to one who has lost. Loss is loss and grief is grief. From what I see, the only balm for the grief suffered from losing someone is time, time and loving and being loved by others. Perhaps, if theists have an edge, their shared beliefs allow them to share the loss easier. And many of the rituals of death in the Western World provide an explicit context for sharing, and for ritualizing the fact that the deceased is no more (Pascal Boyer has a similar point about marriage, in that the marriage makes public an event, which on its face, is private; the community shares the event so that the community shares the change in status of the sexual partners). It's possible that some non-believers, ex-believers, may have a more difficult time than believers. For one, they are often isolated in their experience of the other's loss; they can't share it with, or have others share similar experiences of the loss, because most of the others are experiencing it differently, in a spiritual context. And, in my experience, stress has a tendency to encourage certain kinds of people to build walls of separation; I believe many atheists may be of this sort. It is probably a reflection of the value of independence and individuality in these people. And then, I wonder if for some former believers, the loss of a loved one might resonate with the loss of that world in which all things had explanation, meaning, and purpose; perhaps for some, the loss of another resurrects a struggle against feelings of nihilism which were never completely resolved. In this sense, the loss of another reminds them of a similar loss that they haven't fully come to terms with.

Anyway, as noted, this is all imho. I haven't bothered to look for research to support it, so take it as-is.