Grief is the cost of having had someone worth wishing could stay.

There is no version of deep attachment that comes without exposure. The pain you feel is precisely proportional to having had somebody you did not want to lose, which is what most people spend their lives hoping for. That does not make the loss acceptable or fair. It does mean the grief is not a mistake or a malfunction; it is the other side of something you would not have traded away.

On the worst days, it can steady you slightly to remember what the pain is the price of. Not as consolation, only as context. You are not being punished; you are paying for something you were lucky to have.