I know that's what people say-- you'll get over it. I'd say it, too. But I know it's not true. Oh, youll be happy again, never fear. But you won't forget. Every time you fall in love it will be because something in the man reminds you of him.

The speaker challenges the common consolation that grief is something one simply “gets over.” Instead, the quote distinguishes between recovery and erasure: happiness can return, but loss leaves a permanent imprint on memory and desire. The final lines suggest that later love is not a replacement but a kind of echo—future attachments are shaped by resemblance, however small, to the person mourned. In this view, mourning becomes part of one’s emotional biography, influencing what feels familiar, safe, or compelling in others. The passage captures a sober, compassionate realism about bereavement and the way love persists as pattern as well as feeling.