Profound losses leave us paralyzed and mute, unable really to comprehend them, still less to speak coherently about them. Yet, eventually, we do speak — we breathe, we sleep, we eat, we go for walks in the sun, we find ourselves laughing with our friends — we marry again (as I have), to our astonishment — as we lose the white-hot flame of the most intransigent grief, and pass into another, less desperate sort of being.
Intellectually, I know it’s true, but it takes so long to feel true. And sometimes, in the worst episodes of grieving, I find myself wishing for that white-hot flame to just completely incinerate me, because nothing else will suffice to express the loss. Surviving certain things seems to make a mockery of them, seems like an insult to their memory.