Melissa

“Oh, well. I'll just tell her you seem to have survived it," she said.
Roger said, "Honestly, Ann-Marie!" as if surviving a loved one's death were somehow reprehensible. But the odd thing was, right at that moment I realized that I had survived it. I pictured Ann-Marie's friend waking up this morning, the first full day of her life without her husband, and I thanked heaven that I was past that stage myself. Even though I still felt a constant ache, I seemed unknowingly to have traveled a little distance away from that first unbearable pain.
I sat up straighter and drew a deep breath, and it was then that I began to believe that I really might make my way through this.”
― Anne Tyler, The Beginner's Goodbye