Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.

Missing someone hurts because something good is gone, and that pain has a shape unlike the slow daily wearing-down of living beside contempt. The comparison is not there to rank sorrows or to tell anybody their loss is light. It points instead at how much damage sustained hostility does while looking, from the outside, like an ordinary arrangement.

If you are grieving, the ache measures what was there and needs no justification from anyone. If you are in the other situation, the one nobody calls a tragedy, notice that it is costing you too. Endurance is not the same as a life, and it is allowed to be questioned.