Bereavement

I've been thinking about, and experiencing, bereavement over the last couple of days and what that means to a Christian.

Firstly I don't think it is wrong to grieve Paul, in one his letters, talks about someone nearly dying and how it would have added to his grief (sorry - can't find the reference) so if he could feel like that so can we. But why? As Christians we know that when we die we go to a better place so why not rejoice when a fellow Christian dies? Perhaps the answer is that they have ceased to be a part of the Body of Christ here on earth and that part can never be replaced.

John Donne put it better than me in this poem:

No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee.