This is an answer I posted on Quora.com which I am particularly proud of.

Atheism: How do atheists cope with the moments of despair and loss in their lives?

Your mother is dying, right now, as I type this. And that is tragically heart-rendering. But think about this- so are you. And so am I. And so is anybody else who’s reading this.

Sometimes we know how long we’ve got, but most of the time, we don’t.

If you flip it on its head- your mother is alive, right now, as I type this. So are you. So am I. So is anybody else who is reading this. And we forget this all the time, but this is a beautiful thing. It’s something to sing and dance about. We are alive, we’ve won the greatest of lotteries imaginable.

For me, the starting point of dealing with despair and loss in a sustainable, healthy way begins with the realization that the opportunity to experience despair and loss at all is a precious, precious gift.

I know, this is of little consolation in times when despair actually hits us, and I’m not so callous as to suggest that it would be a solution to you in your present state. It most probably won’t be. But I believe that this is something we have to practice and prepare for, in times of calm and solitude.

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An analogy I’d like to use:
Being born in the world is like magically materializing in Disney World. 

You could sit around, or you could go on the rides. What you do with your time is almost entirely up to you.

Sooner or later, the theme park will close, and your magical time will be over.

But it is a glorious gift to even get the chance to experience the lights and sounds- most “people” don’t. (Try to think of every person that never was. Yeah.)

Some people have better chances than others, some people have more time than others. The question is, what are you going to do with the time you have left?

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I practice thinking about my parents and my girlfriend dying, all the time.

I imagine what it would be like if they got terribly hurt, or paralyzed, and I had to look after them, or vice versa. I imagine what it would be like to lose limbs, to go blind, to suffer terrible illnesses and diseases. I imagine what it would be like if I had a daughter, and she came home, and she had been raped. I do not wish it, not in the slightest. But I know that it is not improbable. And so, in times of calm and solitude, I try to prepare for it, as much as possible.

I don’t mean to say that I obsess about it, or I worry about it constantly.  On the contrary, I visualize such horrible instances with as much calm and clarity as I can manage, so as to carefully discern what the best possible course of action would be. These thoughts don’t randomly waft into my mind- I pursue them. It’s a sort imaginary resilience training.

I believe that this self-directed training allows me to act more gracefully under duress, because I’ve mentally prepared for it. (This is good both for me and my loved ones, and I find that people are disproportionately grateful if you are able to keep a calm head when everything is going to hell around you.)

I further believe that this practice and preparation allows me a certain calm that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to achieve. I prepare myself for tragedy. I try to appreciate every new dawn for its joy and majesty.

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I do not know if I need a crutch, but know that I do need comfort in times of loss and despair. We all do.  Sometimes I am moved to tears just contemplating the tragedy and magnitude of human suffering. And sometimes, quite simply, Life just sucks, and gets really, really hard. I find comfort in my friends, in my loved ones. In music, in art, in beauty. In writing. In reaching out. In connecting to others.

Above all else I find comfort in the knowledge that I am profoundly lucky to have an opportunity to even be in this theme park called Life, regardless of whether I get to go on all the rides, or not.

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I remember that there was a time where none of this talk would have had any effect on me. It was a time when I did not appreciate anything at all, when nothing was comforting, everything was vulgar, harsh, cold, depressing. No crutch sufficed. Religion never occurred to me to be a solution, it was simply too convenient, too provincial. I contemplated suicide, but that seemed like an overly mild solution- the red washing down the bathtub can’t change the colour of the sea.

What would I have done with that kid? To be honest, I’m still not sure. I think I would have sat with him quietly and listened to anything he might have had to say, and when he was finally done, I would have brought him to the beach to sit by the waves and gaze at the stars, and tell him about how the elements in our bodies come from stars like those, and how we are not just in the Universe, but the Universe is also in us, and I would sit with him, and keep him company. I would’ve tried to give him a reason to hang on, because it’s irrational conceit to assume that a trend of negativity is somehow final, and an intellectual like him wouldn’t make such silly assumptions like that.

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What about when my time comes? Well- I got this idea partially from Leonardo da Vinci, who said: “As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.”

I didn’t just want to put that quote out there, I wanted to process it, think about it, make sense of it. Sometimes I go to bed tossing and turning, nervous, anxious and frustrated because I know that I have wasted my hours, but I have also lost the capacity to do anything about it. It’s miserable. At other times, I go to bed with blissful clarity, knowing that I did what I needed to do. It’s beautiful.

Every night I lose consciousness, with no absolute certainty that I’ll wake again. We typically assume we will, but the conscious, thinking mind as we are aware of it essentially ceases to exist while we sleep. So sleep is death, to me, until I wake. And I imagine that death

I’m going to bed after I finish this answer- and it’s entirely possible that I might not wake up tomorrow. That’s absolutely fine. I will sleep well tonight, because I did what needed to be done. I’m honoured to have been here at all, and to have had the opportunity to share these thoughts with you. If you read this, then a part of me will live on in you. How is that even… allowed?! I find that absolutely beautiful to contemplate.

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TL;DR:

How do atheists cope with the moments of despair and loss in their lives?

I can’t speak for everyone, but this particular non-religious person tries to prepare for it.

Man is affected, not by events, but by the view he takes of them. – Epictetus