You can recover,* yet at the same never actually do so. You can laugh at jokes, go on a fun trip, yet at the same time the sense of loss is everpresent. The whole heaven myths, IMHO, are less to give us reassurance about our own individual fate, and more to try to ablate the grief that occurs while you're alive.
Having to get up every morning to get the kid ready for school, feed the pets etc is a valuable forcing function. I don't know how people who live alone manage.
* I wrote "can" because I imagine some people cannot.
I found the advice strangely comforting. Like many, I did not want to let go of the grief. In my grieving mind that would be tantamount to no longer caring. Knowing that the grief would never truly leave however, helped me move on. I’ve found the friend’s advice to be true. Like you, I was able to integrate the grief as part of a new life. The person lost has always remained a part of that new life.
Don’t.
https://allpoetry.com/poem/13601954-Death-Is-Nothing-At-All-...
I am fortunate to have started working with my Dad when I was around 7 years of age. He was a master electrician and started his own business in the 1970s after realizing he could do it better. Outside of school and sports I worked with him everyday doing electrical work until I went off to college. He was not happy when I decided to go off to school for computer programming in the early 1990s which unknowingly then shattered his business dream of “& Son”. At his celebration of life I had so many electricians approach me that were overly grateful to finally meet me as they informed me that I was all my Dad talked about all the time. I had no idea and these relived moments in my mind have been my solace.
I will never truly be the same and the reasoning for me cuts even deeper as a serial entrepreneur as my current startup has returned me to my electrical roots and with every forward step of progress I make I must accept that my father will never get to see this energy storage creation his son invented. I now move forward with my efforts in his honor because without his love and guidance I would not be where I am today.
Damn was this difficult to type. Miss you Dad.
I lost my wife 3.5 years ago. She was in her late 40's. We knew she was going to die, and it was an awful process. We thought we were prepared. But there's no preparing. When it happens, everything inside just shatters. Even 3.5 years later, I find myself just bawling at times, and I consider myself ahead of the grief 'curve' if there is such a thing.
I've come to the conclusion that I'll never be over my wife. Even if I remarry, there will always be that part of me that's hanging on.
You don't really heal. You just find a new balance without that person in your life. You go through the motions until a sense of normal returns. But there will always be part of you that is shattered, never to be whole again. Thankfully, it's not fatal to the sufferer.