Now, recently my step-dad died, and although I wasn't very close to him, my mum was very close so she's been going through "stages of grief".
So the first thing I want to say is it's ok to be sad. Being sad about a friends death is completely normal, natural and nothing to be embarrassed about. The grief will gradually decrease with time, though certain days and events may make it come back. The process is gradual so don't expect to wake up one day and suddenly not be grief stricken, but slowly (and surely) you will return to normal, this may take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months (and maybe even a few years!) depending on how close you were with your friend and how your personality adapts to these changes.
So there could be a couple of reasons why you're finding it hard to cope. It could be some or all of those reasons.
1. You miss your friend
2. You feel sorry for your friend or friends family
3. You feel worried about death
4. You feel like your future has significantly changed for the worse.
So I'll give some words on advice on each of these matters and hopefully it helps some.
1. You miss your friend.
One of the hardest things to stop is the fact that you miss your friend. You miss playing with him, him being around and so forth. After a few days (where the initial "grief stricken" part is over) you can try to cope with this by distracting yourself and keeping productive. That is, if you hang out with other friends, do school work or so forth, missing your friend won't be so hard because you'll be moving forward and preoccupied. You'll still miss your friend, these are only temporary solutions, the only real solution is to wait until missing your friend is no longer such a big deal, as said above this could take anywhere from weeks to months.
2. You feel sorry for your friend and his family
The first thing to note is there's no reason to feel sorry for your friend. If you believe in an afterlife than he is there, looking down on you with all his dreams and hopes come true. If you believe in reincarnation then he is somewhere as a new life form, ready to pursue a brand new life and if you believe in neither, than he feels no pain. In this sense, there is no reason to feel sorry for your friend, he is not in a bad place or sad. His family might be upset, and if you feel sorry for them you should go over to their place and help them out (help the with housework, keep them company, etc), feeling productive and alturistic will make you feel happier about yourself and the situation.
3. You're worried about death.
Don't worry about death, it is unfortunately inevitable for every person but it's not something to be feared. Death is a mystery, it is unknown and that is why it scares us, it is "ending" but what lies after an end? Most scientists believe that consciousness simply ends, now this may seem scary in the sense that you're floating in a void of nothing, but that's not how it is. Being dead is exactly like being not-born, you have been not-born for 13.6 billion years and to you it's felt like nothing, and to you death will feel like nothing. It'll be a peace, you won't dread it because you can't dread anything. No matter what you believe.
4. You feel like your future has significantly changed for the worse.
Life adapts. You and your friend may of had lots of possibilities to do certain things which are now impossible, the best thing to do is try and move on from these possibilities and focus on possibilities that you've wanted to do that are possible. Go out with some friends and try to just forget about the "possibilities", because there are infinite possibilities, both bad and good. If you ever think "Life could be better" just remember "Life could be worse".
Your friends influence in life now relies on you and those that he loved and cared for. The fire that was his life has ended, but the light that he emits still ripples on through space and time. It is now up to you to share this influence, it is up to you to hold his memory, because how everyone will see your friend from now on, they will see him through the eyes of his loved ones. So, don't be upset and don't liken your friend to the tragedy, otherwise that is how your friend will be remembered. Liken your friend to the goodness that he has caused you, the care and the honesty, the traits that made you smile, laugh and cherish and if you think about these traits and share these traits onto others, that is how others will remember your friend. As a good person.
