There is consolation in a philosophical approach to grief

In 1967, a pair of psychiatrists, Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe, reported on their development of a scale that quantified the disruptiveness of different major life events. Holmes and Rahe had asked hundreds of people to rate various events according to how much readjustment in their lives they thought each one would require. Of the 20 events with the highest ratings, three were the deaths of others: death of a close friend (with a rating of 37 on their scale), death of a close family member (63), and, at the very top of their scale, death of one’s spouse (100).