I am so sorry for your loss and I will send prayers out to you and all those that loved her
I can only speak to my own experience with death, loss and sobriety. When my daughter died of cancer 1.5 years ago I knew I had 2 choices. Choice A) was to make a horrible situation worse by drinking or choice B) was to make it through the grief sober.
I chose sobriety. Was it easy? Nope. Was it pretty much horrible? Yup but I made it or I have made it up to today and things are looking pretty good that I wont drink today.
My first action was to mentally take alcohol off the table as an option. This put me in the mind set of, "If I can't drink I better figure out how deal with the pain because I sure don't want to feel this way any longer than I have to." Here are some of the things that helped me.
- Sharing my grief here on SR. If you are interested there numerous posts about my journey through this nightmare
- Prayer, asking God to relieve the pain for a little while
- Knowing that the way I was feeling was not permanent. That eventually I would start to feel better
- Going to AA meetings 3-4 times a week and sharing with friends that I was struggling
- Talking with people who had been through grief and finding out how they dealt with it
- Getting professional grief counseling
- Taking the grief a day at a time. My sponsor would tell me. If you didnt drink today you have been a success
- Educating myself on grief. I did this mostly online with different grief sites
- Letting people help
- Giving myself permission to feel horribly depressed and sad
- Talking to spiritual advisors. One of the most profound things they said was God wants us to be happy. Of course you will always miss the loved one but their death can not define your life. Rejoice in this day the lord has made and be happy
I am not sure any of this will help but all any of us can do is share our experience strength an hope. Again my thoughts are with you.