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Yes, Celes was done very well. The only other instance I can recall of that was...
As someone who has experienced a similar situation, I have to say that was actually handled pretty accurately because...
I think there's a pretty big difference here.
In XIII, when Sazh lost all hope and put his gun to his head. Because of the clever cut, he appeared to be dead for another couple of hours of gameplay. Both Celes and Sazh are very human characters to me partly because both of them hit that moment of intense despair.
As someone who has experienced a similar situation, I have to say that was actually handled pretty accurately because...
When my sister-in-law died in a car crash, four months pregnant, I was there. I was incredibly close to her, moreso than anyone in my adoptive or biological family. My brother, her husband, was driving the car behind her and I was in the passenger seat when someone in an SUV-sized car swerved and took her car clear off the road. I didn't shed a tear, not for days. It took me over a week to cry for her, and during the counseling I sought in the following months I learned that violent death tends to carry a kind of shock. It causes the average person to shut down more than a little. Outbursts of rage and even violence (like striking walls or pushing people over) are common, and it can take anywhere between a few days and a few weeks for the crying to happen. If anything, the only thing I found to be unrealistic about Hope's handling of those issues were that within a day and a half he was seemingly fine again. Maybe he cried during the time on Gran Pulse we don't get to see where they searched all over (implied to be a sizable stretch of time), but all in all he seemed to have gotten over it a lot faster than anyone I know.
We don't get to see how Ashe reacts in the opening days. You get to see her briefly in her mourning gown, but this is largely skipped over as a way to continue the main narrative. We don't actually see Ashe in a true character capacity until she's met in the Garamsythe Waterway, after the gameplay of XII begins. There is a two (2) year gap between the deaths of Rassler/King Dalmasca and the game itself. Two years later Ashe is consumed by hatred and the need for vengeance to the point that she very nearly becomes pawn to the Occuria, whereas Hope achieves a level of mostly cheery determination in the space of at least two days (plus somewhere between a few days and a few weeks when taking into account the Gran Pulse arrival timeskip) by contrast. This is part of the reason I said Hope got over his issues a little too fast when it comes to in-game time, but Ashe is an opposite-end case of seemingly not overcoming her issues at all until the course of the story forces her to move on. Either way, the lack of seeing Ashe in her initial period of grief makes this a faulty comparison. It's sort of like comparing someone who had their arm broken a few years ago against someone who had their arm broken yesterday and saying the first person is handling it better.
Likes:
Leon Aether
Sorry, I have to play XII like 4 years now, and some things I can't remember well. But still as I stated above, I enjoy more the story progression when the mourning time has passed a bit more quickly, even if that means that the events skip like two years later. One scene or two is enouph. No need for stretching. But yes you are right about Hope and Ashe. I suppose Hope indeed got over it a bit quickly, but for me, the game still focused too much on his mother death. It's totally excusable since XIII was story driven, but I couldn't bear it... Sometimes such things remind me some personal experiences, and I have tried and achieved to lock them up somehow, and find balance again...
xii/x/xiii/xiii-2 spoilers 
Vanille and Fang's fate at the end of XIII, while not death, was very hard to take. And all through XIII-2, when I was traveling along the timeline, all I could think about was the rest of the characters haD DIED BY THIS TIME. And I honestly got really upset more than once. And.. especially... Amodar actually... died by the end, with the rest of the Nora crew, (Although I don't really care about the latter it's just really sad to think about they had to live their entire lives waiting for Serah and Snow to come back and it never happened. It's so sad ;;..)
Auron's death made me really sad as I played X-2 and realized, he was well, dead.
I also cried like a baby at the end of XIII and XIII-2. Oh god, it was really bad. And at the end of XII, when I thought Balthier and Fran had died, and they came back. It was awesome.
Also. Nora.
I was honestly happy Chappu in X died pre-X. Shoot me.
Auron's death made me really sad as I played X-2 and realized, he was well, dead.
I also cried like a baby at the end of XIII and XIII-2. Oh god, it was really bad. And at the end of XII, when I thought Balthier and Fran had died, and they came back. It was awesome.
Also. Nora.
I was honestly happy Chappu in X died pre-X. Shoot me.
Likes:
Ehren
I think that's because Aerith's death is the most well-known, so nobody felt the need to bring it up. Aerith's death is pretty damn iconic, and it was certainly a gamechanger for me. I was pretty ambivalent on Aerith herself, but she was great to have as a healer and my party took some serious reshuffling after she was gone.