How do you know something good has come to an end? You measure it by the pain you feel from the loss. The greater the pain the more valuable that something was to you. You don't combat pain. Instead you go back to all those happy places and times that generated the value and find that there is so much to appreciate and be grateful for, so much you'd never change or trade for something different if you had known about the pain at the end of it. It's hard to say good bye to the dead, but it is also hard to say good bye to the living, when you realise that the person you once deeply valued and cared for is gone never to return. And what inhabits the shell of what you once loved is someone different, one you don't really recognise anymore.