Today's update: I have noticed over the last week that the death of ex seems to be turning into "something that happened" rather than this enormous, giant shifting of my world on its axis. I noted that when I think about it, which is not constantly (that in itself is an improvement), my thoughts are dominated by worrying about Kid, how this will affect her, what could I be doing to help, etc. It's not like I wasn't thinking about Kid before (I have always been thinking about her!) but my concern for her coexisted with this huge non-verbal sense of OH MY GOD HE ACTUALLY DIED, HE'S GONE, HE'S DEAD, etc. Now that it starting to quiet down. The impact on my psyche is slightly muted, so I've got more bandwidth to think about the impact on Kid. His death is becoming this thing that happened, not a central fact of my world.
(And here's a weird slightly trivial thing - you might have heard of email apnea, that involuntary holding of breath as you wait for email to download or open, because you don't know what kind of weirdness will be in the email. Well, I'm not email-apneic any more. I find that I'm inhaling and exhaling like a normal person while checking email, because I'm starting to realize that I am not going to be faced with either alcoholic crazy ranting or yet another message from my lawyer about some whacked-out thing that ex is trying to do. Body/mind connection - my breathing is changing).