Jo Firestone mourns the loss of a beloved friend, and recommends not reading that Joan Didion book. Once again, we see how people struggle to offer support -- and to accept it.

Someone is gone. Perhaps this is the first year you had to get used to it, or maybe you’ve had years of practice with how the calendar keeps going, and it’s still hard.

Either way, for right now I recommend getting in the bath.

Lie faceup if you want. I prefer facedown, coming up for air every few seconds like a nervous snorkeler. On a personal note, my bathtub is short, so I am forced to choose between submerging the top half of my body or submerging the bottom half. I always choose the top half, leaving my legs out of the water, looking like the first dolphin to live in an apartment.

Now onto a jigsaw puzzle, or doodling, or just stacking your mail into a Jenga-like pile. Anything that uses your hands more than your head. Stay in your robe all day, or if that’s too warm, try a shirt with no pants, like Winnie the Pooh. Eat something. Tell one of those people who keep saying, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do” that there is something they can do and it’s to bring you more pretzels — the good kind, or really any kind but the ones you bought last time, because those were bad. How can they make a pretzel bad? I don’t know, but they can, and they did and last time you bought them.

Tell Me One More Time What to Do About Grief