Sadness is a stepping stone to happiness.

Grief runs in proportion to what mattered. Nobody mourns something they were indifferent to.

So the size of what you're feeling is also a measurement — of the friendship, or the version of the future you'd already half moved into and furnished. The capacity that hurts right now is the same one that did the loving. It isn't broken. It's in use.

None of which obliges it to become useful on any particular schedule. But it is pointing at something, and the direction it points is usually worth knowing once you can bear to look.