"grieving the death of a mother" by harold ivan smith -- i thought this was a nice little book & i was going to tell you that you could probably transfer a lot of what he wrote to losing a father.
then i found another one of his books:
"on grieving the death of a father"
(i haven't read it but you can check it out on amazon, read some of the reviews, order it from your library.)
maybe get a notebook and write down your thoughts/feelings/memories about dad. i read your tribute to him--there's a lifetime of love there, and the love doesn't end. when someone we love dies our relationship with them does not end. it is drastically altered, sometimes tragically, but it's not over. and it becomes our challenge to adapt to the new arrangement/design of what was so set and fixed and familiar. they take a piece of us when they go and i think we not only grieve for them but for the part of us that is now missing - a part that makes us incomplete. and if life was good we grieve over the realization that our life will never be the same.
the most recent book i have to read is "i wasn't ready to say goodbye" and while it isn't specifically a book about losing a mother i can tell by skimming through it and the table of contents that there will be plenty for me to relate to. (and regardless of how long a time we have to prepare for the death of a parent--or anyone--i had about a week--i don't think we're ever completely ready. we just don't realize all the ramifications that we're going to be hit with later on.) maybe i'm wrong. maybe there are the perfect and easy deaths but i've never known one and i've never seen one.
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