'Normal' Grief or Not?

[WizzyWoz]

My grandpa died a few months ago and I'm not sure my nan is coping. She depended on him a lot and has made comments such as "I'm struggling today" on a few occasions. I've told her it will take time and me and my sister are going to see her as much as we can but we both have other things going on in our lives and can only realistically get to see her a couple of evenings a week each. How do we decide if and when it goes from 'normal' grieving to something she might need to see her doctor about?

That sounds absolutely without in the bounds of 'normal'. I would expect anyone to still be grieving for a partner of 40 (?,50?, 60?) years after just a few months. You can have 'bad days' for years. It is good that she can acknowledge that and not feel she has to 'put on a front'.

Oh yes we totally expect her to still be grieving, it's just that the other day when DS visited she'd only had toast for dinner and she didn't seem to have much food in, they've always tended to go shopping day by day and DG was doing that as far as we knew. Although she'll tell us when she's having a bad day she doesn't want us to worry or go out of our way so tries to avoid asking us for favours for things like lifts to the opticians (she doesn't drive) so it's sometimes a but of guesswork how bad things are.