Here's what I most want you to know: this really is as bad as you think. No matter what anyone else says, this sucks. What has happened cannot be made right. What is lost cannot be restored. There is no beauty here, inside this central fact. Acknowledgement is...
When we choose to love, we choose to face death, and grief and loss, again and again and again. Just as much as we choose the friendlier parts of love. It's all there, present and contained, in everything.
Acknowledgement is the best medicine we have. It doesn't seem like it should do anything, but when somebody is in pain and you look at them and you say, "I see you," that's medicine.
There are losses that rearrange the world; deaths that change the way you see everything; grief that tears everything down; pain that transports you to an entirely different universe, even while everyone else thinks nothing has really changed.