How to I break through the illusion of numbness?

Grief is a wrenching emotion and therefore one of the most threatening. Those we love have been taken inside us and made a part of who we are. When they die or are threatened by crisis, we feel that our own being has been attacked. To the unconscious mind, there is a real threat that we are going to die with them. By going numb instead of grieving, your ego pretends that the loss isn't agonizing, that the threat is not so grave as it actually is.

Grief falls into the rare category of being a necessary suffering. You have to go through it before you can release it back to the light. Have patience with your grief. In this period of necessary suffering comes a great sense of purification. The sting of death is no longer quite as anguishing. The possibility of letting in the light once again becomes real.