"Comfort" by Alice Munro

"She got the box open and put her hand into the cooling ashes and tossed or dropped them – with other tiny recalcitrant bits of the body – among those roadside plants. Doing this was like wading and then throwing yourself into the lake for the first icy swim, in June. A sickening shock at first, then amazement that you were still moving, lifted up on a stream of steely devotion – calm above the surface of your life, surviving, though the pain of the cold continued to wash into your body."

"Comfort"
Alice Munro