Dealing with grief

It's been 2 years since my mother died, and I still have moments of intense grief. It's just the way it is. There are moments when I still break down crying, even though I have a strong religious faith and a deep core belief in the resurrection hope held out in the bible.

There are a lot of grief management books, websites, and support groups out there. Lots of acknowledgment that people need to grieve, that suffering loss is a healthy thing, that there are many stages of grief, that not feeling or showing grief is unnatural and creepy, yada yada.

Yeah, so?

So two weeks ago I saw a new doctor, and on the initial visit while explaining what types of work I have done that may have led to some of the health problems I now suffer I broke down in tears when telling him about my mother's illness and death. He then offered me the phone number to a counselor and told me I obviously had some unresolved issues I needed to deal with. He may be right, and I did take the number, but my appointment was also almost exactly on the anniversary of my mother's death... Why wouldn't I cry over her loss? While my religious faith makes her loss easier to bear, it is still a loss. Old age, illness, and death are ugly, why is it wrong or unacceptable to show grief over these things?

I think that society today is very good at labels, professed concern, and intellectualizing feelings, but very poor at actually having them or dealing with them in real time.