Over Labor Day weekend, a close family member of mine unfortunately passed away. He was not the first family member that I have ever lost, however that didn’t make the loss any easier. Losing a loved one is hard at any age, but now I understand how hard it is to lose someone in your twenties.

For me, I feel like my life is just beginning. My future is just starting to take form. It’s strange that other people’s lives are coming to an end. At this age, you start to lose people that were once constants in your life. People you have known your entire life are no longer there. Death is such a strange part of life, but it is a part of life and we have to learn how to cope with it. Here are three ways to cope that I have found very important this past week:

1. Spend time alone.

Alone time can often be really hard to come by as a college student. There seems to always be someone around. Ordinarily, I like to be surrounded by people but when I first learned of the loss of my relative, all I wanted to do was be alone. It was very hard for me to find that alone time, and I didn’t actually find time to deal with it on my own until a few days later. But it was so important for me to have that time by myself to deal with my sadness.

2. Spend time with your friends and family.

Contrary to what I just said, it’s also important to deal with your sadness with others as well. My friends and family were able to bring comfort and encouragement to me. This encouragement was something that I wouldn’t have been able to find on my own. That’s why the balance of spending time alone and with your loved ones is so important. Also, spending time with your loved ones while dealing with a loss makes you hold onto them a little bit tighter and love them even more than you already do.

3. Spend time with God.

I cannot stress this point enough. God is the ultimate provider of comfort, and Christ was familiar with the same pain and suffering that we endure (Isaiah 53:3). There is no one who knows what we are dealing with better than God does. Take the time to talk with God about how you are feeling. Tell Him if you are sad or angry; tell him how much you miss that person and tell Him about the good memories you have. He is there to listen and to help, and He wants to.

I can never seem to come up with the right words to say to someone coping with the loss of a loved one. So instead of ending with my words, I will end with the Word of God:

2 Corinthians 1:3-5

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.”