But grieving people are selfish. They won’t let you comfort them and they say you don’t understand and they make you feel useless when all your life you’ve been functional to them.

She misses him more now than when he was away

They always prided themselves on looking youthful. “Forty’s the new thirty,” they’d joke.
Until heartbreak and grief enter your life, and then forty’s the new one hundred.

I should hate to be employed and have no time for my needlework and my painting and playing the piano and seeing people. I find I have little enough spare time as it is." "Rubbish, caro, one can find time for important things if one makes an effort." conversation between Georgie and Lucia

Play me something that makes me feel;
This soul inside me is made of steel.
Brain is breathing, but heart’s not beating
And, babe, I need you to make things real.
Walk inside me without silence,
Kill the past and change the tense.
Empty gnawing and the ache is soaring;
Take me places that make more sense.

Finnikin had learned over the years not to think of anything beyond the practicalities of getting from one point to another. To focus on the achievable.