When you experience a death among your family or close friends it is normal to feel that it both unifies and divides you from others apart from your own group who are suffering. There is a feeling of having stepped aside from the world at the moment.

In the early days everyone lifts you up, eager to offer you sympathy and support, helping you through the first weeks of grief.  However, they have their own busy lives to attend to and, gradually, they re-focus on their own issues.  Your life has changed with this death. 

 You need time to grieve so it is difficult to just pick up your own life and issues in it.  Your loss divides you from others because you feel lone in your separate place, alone in your shattered, altered landscape.  

You no longer feel part of the busy wave of humanity because death has set you apart, taking you to a level of anguish and pain that others are not experiencing.

You look at the shattered remains of your life and realise it will never be the same again, but as you allow yourself to heal, you can in time slowly re-build your life, with some elements the same and some that have changed.