I lost my half-sister to a car accident when I was very young.
Dealing with that was horrible, and did virtually rip me out of childhood and into a lot of the cold necessities of life, particularly death. I was born idealistic, joyful, and with that joy very easy to puncture, like a bubble. With my bubble broken in a big way by the horrendous shock of that event, I had to either give up on every ideal I had, become cynical and decide that life is a waste of time and humanity is a waste of space, or make myself strong enough to make an attempt at realising those ideals in a world where they weren't expressed yet.
Thankfully, after a few years taking the lower of those two paths and looking into dark possibilities for myself, I chose the right road... and I'm still trying to walk along that, basically. I think that finding the perspective to see the suffering humanity itself faces daily and then finding yourself a meaningful pursuit to curb that suffering is part of the puzzle of defeating the control grief takes over your life.
The worst part of it now, is consoling my mother, every time the anniversary of her death, and her birthday, come around. She lost her daughter that day, and even though my half-sister was like a second mother to me, it is the mother-child connection that suffers the most in that circumstance, I believe. I could never expect my mother to find what I had to to survive being the post-crybaby at school (and thus having to be ready to deal with attacks from most of the school community as my confidence grew), because it would have been easier for me to find that will. If she ever does, and I see a true smile blossom on her face again after all these years, it'll be worth every moment of effort.
Beating grief is about strength. Personal strength; will, the ability to conquer your fear, your doubt, and bring back your will to live yourself. I think that psychologists try to find shortcuts to happiness rather than search for strength within people (though a new discipline called "positive psychology", which does basically that, is on the rise, apparently). Everyone has their strength - it's all about finding that.
I think that even an imaginary strength can convert to a real one if you believe in it truly enough - that's why things like spirituality or anime can help some creatively-minded people out of depression. When someone says "God saved me from killing myself" I think that they really mean (or in any case, it is probably true) that their faith did so. After all, that faith is a strength of conviction coming from within them, and ultimately any type of inner strength can be used against grief with time and nurturing.
