As a nurse-midwife, birth and its unlikely twin, death, were familiar, renting the fabric between worlds, opposite ends of the spectrum. I’ve studied death, helped mothers and fathers accept death, experienced close, loving deaths. Healthy death, the bereaved recovering and healing.

Recently, my brother Steve, a psychologist, brought up grief. “People in America think grief is supposed to follow a pattern or else they’re doing it wrong, or it’s taking too long, or they’re stuck, not ‘moving on.’ Plus, they feel guilty if they laugh or feel happy when they think they’re ‘supposed’ to be grieving, or think it’s wrong to be angry at the person who died. They need to know they’re OK, all of it’s OK. But if they’re truly not OK, they can reach out, there’s help.”

Prolonged grief is a new entity in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM, the bible of........

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