GRIEF: Not a review. Not exactly. (If it were? Two stars.)

This is pretty personal so, if you're after a review of something film or improv/comedy-related, please feel free to skip. But I had to post it somewhere, to get it out. So:

I have two children, and my life moves to a fairly regular beat so that they know where they are. After a certain age, a child's routine is a moving train that must be kept on track or school, playdates, birthday parties and the like all start to slip into an ugly chaos. You are (in theory) the bedrock of a child's security, sometimes even long after they've moved out and moved on. And that's why it's such a shock when one of you dies.

When my mum died I'd been half expecting it for a couple of days. She'd been unresponsive in hospital for just over half a week, and her blood pressure was erratic. I'd seen her every day and she was warm to the touch, occasionally squeezing my hand through what I believe was reflex. There was a tube in her nose and she breathed noisily, with apparently forced regularity. Not automated but not quite natural, either. Not awake. Each time when I left I said goodbye, thinking it would probably be the last time I said it.

When my dad phoned to say she died, it was like a big gap opened in my chest. I was at work and tried to hold onto normality, going to improv class after that and to the pub after that. I took to the pub with a special enthusiasm. The hospital was far enough away that it wasn't yet practical to visit. I didn't cry much, if at all, then; but a river of feeling ran just beneath my skin, making me quick to anger and pretty much any other emotion. There was a slice of normality about half a centimetre deep. Writing this now I can feel the hard heartbeat and full-body shakes that went with the feeling. When it rose up a bit higher, there was that heat behind the eyes, and the inability to look at people straight.

As this description may indicate, I'm not the most outwardly emotive of people, so sought ways to 'get the emotion out'. I went to see her body, which lay in a toughly tucked red bed that sat in a calming room, furnished with a lectern and a ready supply of tissues. She was still soft to the touch but cold, like marble. I've always been a fan of seeing to understand and, especially when it came to processing the cremation that followed a week or so later, I think this was very useful. It helped me to understand she wasn't there anymore. I left the room without bothering to wipe away the tears and walked out through the hospital in the same fashion. It was a badge of pride, or something. Like ancient Greek mourners. Even up to the waiting room before seeing the body, I'd been making lame jokes about the cheesy decor, choice of magazines, etc, but all that drifted off like steam after I left the body behind.

On the day of the funeral, I can't tell you how much I didn't want to go. I've been to plenty of events that I wasn't terribly keen on, but this put those in the shade by several orders of magnitude. That feeling faded as I left the house, and decided to become a kind of automated host. The rest of the day was a mix of tears (the service, crematorium), bad but surprisingly effective jokes (the car between the funeral and the crematorium) and a great deal of pleasure in connecting with people who were still alive (the wake).

I'm writing this as honestly as I can, just in case it helps someone who's in a similar position. What I didn't understand about grief is that it's a long road. There are spikes at the start, but then it's like driving round the world's biggest, longest roundabout and finding that some of the signs make you cry. Going to my parents' - my dad's - house with the children when she's not there to talk, make food, drink cups of tea - not getting weekly emails about Strictly Come Dancing or frequent links to news stories about super foods, the idea that my youngest daughter will never know her - anything like this can hit you out of the blue.

(For instance: packing to take the children to visit my dad the other week, Dear Jessie - that sugary Madonna track - was on the radio and I was suddenly attacked by tears. You get the idea.)

The anger slipped back after a few weeks, after a bit of time off work and a good bit of staring into space. I was still going to improv classes at this point and they proved really useful - every scene suddenly seemed to have death, a funeral or a will reading in it (there was nearly always an angle, if you looked close enough), and it really helped me to work out and understand some of the emotions. I think anything that helps you recognise and process these feelings honestly is a good thing, and you shouldn't be afraid of triggering them; I find it oddly comforting that they're still there, like an echo of her.

My only real recommendation is that you should do whatever you need to, and feel comfortable in that. People will offer to help and, if they really can, then say yes. I received messages from people I hadn't seen in years, and probably won't see for more years, but the fact that they took the trouble to get in touch meant a lot. Nothing fixes it; nothing should - but it does get better.

(Also, see this piece by Cariad Lloyd - which is great on how to deal with people who are grieving, and grief in general.)