A very touching essay, probably the finest that has ever been featured on this website.
Please also find an Illuminated Understanding of death, and therefore everything else too via these two references.
http://www.adidam.org/death_and_dying/index.html
The most beautiful set of words ever written/spoken on the topic
http://www.easydeathbook.com/purpose.asp

Please also find some practical Wisdom on serving the transition of dying/dead feathered and furry beings. And Black Ducks with attitude problems too.
http://sacredcamelgardens.com/wordpress/serving-dying-animals

.

Dear Shira,

.

As I see it, it makes no difference, so far as your father is concerned, whether you believe in God or not.

If it is of any comfort to you to believe in God, I see no harm in your doing so.

Illusions were made for that.

.

.

Dear Shira,

.

Death is not a problem for the dead, it is a problem for the living.

The dead no longer exist.

It's magic: now you are, now you're not. It puts our capacity to metamorphose to the test.

Death is irreversible. We can't restore life to corpses.

Your dad obviously had a purpose for you. He launched you in life because he wanted you to fly [... he urged (you) to leave his hospital bedside and return to (your) husband and young children because "they need you"].

We often wonder if there is a purpose in life, the answer is to be found in everything our parents say to us. It is our parents who give us purpose.

Many of us do not have a purpose. We just have a reason. Perhaps our parents were simply obeying the instincts implanted in them by nature to assure the survival of the species.

As we develop free will, our capacity to modify the trajectory imprinted in us by our parents increases. At some point, we are able, if we wish, either to continue to fulfil the purpose attributed to us by our parents or do something else.

We do not have a problem with the dead. We have a problem with death.

Death triggers an emotional reaction which can rise up and engulf us if we are not careful. It has nothing to do with the departed. It has to do with our own feelings. It is purely narcissistic.

I witnessed the case in a small country village here in France where I live, of a lady my wife and I knew well. She gradually entered into a deep depression when her father died. She reached the point where she persuaded herself that she could have done even more for him than she did, and if she had, he would not have died.

She had had an unhappy marriage and divorced. Her children were married and had children of their own. She lived with her father and her whole life revolved around him.

She was totally inconsolable.

.

.

Dear Shira,

.

Perhaps a musical comedy from some of my creepy fossil friends (who, like me, snuffed out a long time ago), Camille Saint-Saëns, André Kostelanetz, Ogden Nash and Noel Coward, might cheer you up:
.
At midnight in the museum hall
The fossils gathered for a ball
There were no drums or saxophones,
But just the clatter of their bones,
A rolling, rattling, carefree circus
Of mammoth polkas and mazurkas.
Pterodactyls and brontosauruses
Sang ghostly prehistoric choruses.
Amid the mastodontic wassail
I caught the eye of one small fossil.
"Cheer up, sad world," he said, and winked—
"It's kind of fun to be extinct."
.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJXP1_tX44w

Or if you prefer the version without that raucous laughing jackass who can't hold his tongue ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBGEf4urGNo

.

.

Dear Shira,

.

Though your silence is gold ... a little philosophy can't do any harm ...

.

... crossing the Jordan ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2VCwBzGdPM

... to remember ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XceA18B8-Og

... a wonderful world ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43HYIB-9DlE

.