Saying goodbye at a funeral hurts less when you believe it’s “see you later.”

Believing you will see someone again does not remove the ache of the room, the folded programme, or the drive home. It changes what kind of goodbye it is. The missing stays exactly as heavy, because love does not get discounted by hope, and anyone who says otherwise has not lost much. What hope offers is a different ending, not a smaller loss.

If you are in this now, let yourself miss them as much as you do. Say their name out loud around people who knew them. Hold the hope loosely on days it will not hold, and let somebody sit with you instead of being brave about it.