How Do You Grieve?

I discovered not too long ago that when I am grieving I get snippy. I snap and get a little bit mean. I seem to lose patience with everything. My tolerance for everyday, superficial expressions disappears. I become like a wounded creature clutching my pain and curling up into my burrow licking the throbbing with stillness and isolation. This becomes an opportunity for others to forgive me for my roughness, shortness, and cruelty, and for me to forgive myself for pushing others away. Sharing becomes quite tender and difficult. How do you grieve? I am looking around to see how we as a community grieve, as a culture grieve. In some cultures grieving rituals and ceremony are a regular practice. The community rallies around the grieving parent or citizen and shares in the expression of distress and pain. Purging grief from the group and from its individuals transmutes the mourning so that the sun can shine in on the morrow. Wise practice I think.