Do what you have to do, my grieving friends. Take a bereavement day off from work. Buy yourself a bottle of wine and a box of tissues. Start a support group and let the healing begin.

The worst has happened.

Patrick Dempsey might be just fine, but Dr. Derek Shepherd is dead.

For those watching the show live, it happened just before 9 p.m.

“I’m crying so hard,” one woman posted on Twitter. “I can’t do this. How could they?”

“Thanks for killing my dreams,” tweeted another, “my hopes and my heart.”

It doesn’t look like they were kidding. Emotions were stirred Thursday night after the beloved Dempsey character, the very soul of “Grey’s Anatomy,” came to an end.

“Too shocked to speak,” wrote Barbara Dupee Kazimer of Lisbon.

Some say it was because Dempsey was a bit of a diva on the set. Others insist it was just time for his character to die. Whatever. Shepherd was dead, and it hurt.

“As a person who has been a dedicated viewer, the last episode was skillfully written, but I am deeply saddened by the ending of his character,” said Heidi L. Audet of Greene. “The show began with the chance meeting of the two main characters, and everything has revolved around it for the past 10 seasons. The dance between the two — Meredith and Derek — was the ebb and flow of the show.”

Audet, shaken by the news, gathered herself enough so that she could provide a Derek Shepherd primer, for those who are not familiar.

“His character was finalized as a result of poor medical care — he needed a CT scan to check if he had a brain bleed, and Derek narrated his opinion of the ineptness and inexperience of the medical personnel responsible for his care. The great neurosurgeon died as a result of brain trauma.

“The brain trauma,” Audet continued, “was the result of his car being hit by a tractor-trailer, after he saved four individuals from a near-fatal car wreck shortly before.”

And one more thing.

“I admittedly did cry,” Audet said.

There’s no shame in that.

We all grieve in our own way.