I'm sorry for your loss. As others have said much more eloquently, it will get easier over time. My father died two years ago from prostate cancer - he was 58. I was 27 at the time and very close to him. I lived at home at that point (went back to school) and my father was my cycling buddy. We rode together several times a week, rode a few centuries together, etc. At some point he became more than just my dad - he was my friend and I really enjoyed being with him.

After he died I was pretty broken up. Sad, angry, you name it. I felt cheated. I felt like he was unjustly taken from me at a relatively young age. I felt really sad not only because I would miss him, but because he also would not be able to continue experiencing life. Man, it still sucks thinking about it to this day. I'm crying just writing this. But now, two years on, the intense pain in the middle of my chest that I felt every second of every day for months after he died - that pain almost never shows up anymore. It lessened over time. The sadness doesn't go away, but the physical pain associated with it has pretty much disappeared. Losing him was the first time I had really lost a close loved one and I was really unprepared for the actual physical pain that I felt in my chest. It felt like getting punched on the sternum over and over and over again. But over time, it lessened little by little and then it went away completely. Like I said, the sadness remains but the pain does not.

The pain only flared up a few times, thankfully: once I was caught off-guard when I logged on to facebook and was reminded that it was his birthday. I had completely forgotten about it! And yet there I was at work, blindsided by facebook and holding back tears at my desk.

Right now, thinking of my dad, I wish he was alive. I'd do anything for him to be alive. There is so much I want to share with him, to tell him, to do with him, and it really sucks that I'll never have a chance to do any of that. I hate it. It makes me so sad.

But like I said, it's manageable. I can live my life, I can think about the good times and smile and genuinely feel good about them. As someone else said, there are days when I don't think about him at all and I'll catch myself and feel guilty about it. Then there are days where he's constantly on my mind. I actually just remembered that I haven't visited his gravestone in several months, even though I was in the area several times. I'll have to make sure to do that very soon.