Words never mean what we want them to mean.
Fiction works when it makes a reader feel something strongly.
We could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened.
Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-children's will be. But we learn to live with that love.
I would have done anything for him. Maybe that was my sickness.
The only way to overcome sadness is to consume it.