Grief Quotes - Page 11

There are all kinds of ways for a relationship to be tested, even broken, some, irrevocably; it’s the endings we’re unprepared for.

Listen to me: die after me, all right? I don't care what else you do, where you go, how you screw up your life, just... survive. Outlive me, please.

This is another awful truth of losing people you love: everyone needs something different. And the needs almost never match up.

You will live in me always. Your words, your heart, your soul are all part of me. My heart is full of your memories. Thank you for the gift of your life. I will never forget you.

I missed my one true friend, my mother. She and I were close in a way I don't think many other mothers and daughters were. I slept beside her every night of my childhood: so near to her back, I could probably sketch the constellation of moles and freckles on her skin there. When I was a very little girl, every morning I would wake before her and arrange myself so that when she woke, we were eye-to-eye. I miss her, with a never-ending ache that I did not think was possible, that crowds out any other feeling and certainly all reason, and any good sense.

Perhaps ... To R.A.L.Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,And I shall see that still the skies are blue,And feel one more I do not live in vain,Although bereft of you.Perhaps the golden meadows at my feet,Will make the sunny hours of spring seem gay,And I shall find the white May-blossoms sweet,Though You have passed away.Perhaps the summer woods will shimmer bright,And crimson roses once again be fair,And autumn harvest fields a rich delight,Although You are not there.But though kind Time may many joys renew,There is one greatest joy I shall not knowAgain, because my heart for loss of YouWas broken, long ago.

One feels such love for the little ones, such anticipation that all that is lovely in life will be known by them, such fondness for that set of attributes manifested uniquely in each: mannerisms of bravado, of vulnerability, habits of speech and mispronouncement and so forth; the smell of the hair and head, the feel of the tiny hand in yours—and then the little one is gone! Taken! One is thunderstruck that such a brutal violation has occurred in what had previously seemed a benevolent world. From nothingness, there arose great love; now, its source nullified, that love, searching and sick, converts to the most abysmal suffering imaginable.

He did touch people's lives, the lives of strangers, in an entirely unanticipated way. It was they who really mourned him - or what they thought was him - with a grief that was no less sharp for not being intimate with its object.

The people in the hospital had been struck by her calm and the number of questions she had asked. They hadn't appreciated her inability to understand something quite obvious – that Tolya was no longer among the living. Her love was so strong that Tolya's death was unable to affect it: to her, he was still alive.She was mad, but no one had noticed. Now, at last, she had found Tolya. Her joy was like that of a mother-cat when she finds her dead kitten and licks it all over.A soul can live in torment for years and years, even decades, as it slowly, stone by stone, builds a mound over a grave; as it moves towards the apprehension of eternal loss and bows down before reality.

You can do the impossible, because you have been through the unthinkable.

Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.Think rather,--call to thought, if now you grieve a little,The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarryI slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry:Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason,I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season:Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain:Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation--Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again?

Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead but about the ways in which the dead drag us along into their shadowy realm because we cannot let them go. So we follow them into the Underworld, descending, descending, until one day we turn and make our way back.

photographs are very interesting, and you can look into them a million times and still find a new meaning in them, something in the past that was caught in the film itself…

Tonight all the hells of young grief have opened again; the mad words, the bitter resentment, the fluttering in the stomach, the nightmare unreality, the wallowed-in tears. For in grief nothing ‘stays put.’ One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats.

Grief wraps around people, takes them to a place they would not go otherwise.

In Louisiana, one of the first stages of grief is eating your weight in Popeyes fried chicken. The second stage is doing the same with boudin. People have been known to swap the order. Or to do both at the same time.

It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless the book is a novel.

Stories aren't facts, Cait, they're not details. Stories are feelings. You've got your feelings, haven't you?""Too many," I said."Well, that's all you need." He put his hand on mine. "Cry yourself a story, love. It works. Believe me."So that's what I did, I cried myself a story.And this is it.

At first I thought he was laughing because his shoulders were shaking, but then he put his palms on his eyes and I realized he was crying. It was the quietest crying I've ever heard. Like a whisper. I was going to go over to him, but then I thought maybe he was whisper-crying because he didn't want me or anyone else to hear him.

Although it seems shocking to say so, grief is a funny thing. On the one hand, you're numb, yet on the other, something inside is trying desperately to claw its way back to normal: to pull a funny face, to leap out like a jack-in-the-box, to say "Smile, damn you, smile!

The black color is much deeper than to be overwhelmed by grief… Black hides everything within itself in the argument of elegance.

There is a grotesquerie to grief as well. You lose the sense of your existence being rational, or justifiable. You feel absurd.

You're back where you swore yourself you wouldn't beThe familiar shackles you can't tell from your own skinYour head's under water when you learned to swimOn a road to hell, congratulations, you're free...

We all think when we’re young that we want excitement and highs and passion. To hell with ordinary.”I smiled and she chuckled. “But when we find ourselves in these adult bodies,” she said. “When we wise up a little, or get slapped in the face by life, we realize we just want all things to be equal.” She put the heels of her hands together near her heart like the Yoga prayer position. “And we want to understand them better.

Maybe heartache was more normal than the absence of it.

He took a deep breath in, still managing himself as if he were resisting temptation. He was a soldier, his father was in the service, too. Crying wasn't something Morell men did. They just didn't. He hadn't cried at Robbie Morell's funeral.So he wasn't going to now.

You must remain. I must depart.Two autumns falling in the heart.

Rejection is one of the worse forms of pain. Loss is the worst. Grief haunts until you allow yourself to move on.

When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.

Dysphagia is the medical term for not being able to swallow, and I know that there are two kinds of dysphagia: oropharyngeal and esophageal. But maybe there is also a third kind of dysphagia that comes when your heart breaks into pieces. I can't swallow because I have that kind.

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. Amen.

A poor old Widow in her weedsSowed her garden with wild-flower seeds;Not too shallow, and not too deep,And down came April -- drip -- drip -- drip.Up shone May, like gold, and soonGreen as an arbour grew leafy June.And now all summer she sits and sewsWhere willow herb, comfrey, bugloss blows,Teasle and pansy, meadowsweet,Campion, toadflax, and rough hawksbit;Brown bee orchis, and Peals of Bells;Clover, burnet, and thyme she smells;Like Oberon's meadows her garden isDrowsy from dawn to dusk with bees.Weeps she never, but sometimes sighs,And peeps at her garden with bright brown eyes;And all she has is all she needs --A poor Old Widow in her weeds.

The house is eerily quiet. All this time I thought silence would be a welcome reprieve, but it's less comforting than I imagined. The house feels so much bigger and colder than it ever has.

We get sombre about death. Think about Charon the ferryman rowing the souls across the Styx to the Isle of the Dead. Pretty grim stuff. Unless you think that, perhaps, at times, old Charon rows souls back to the land of the living too. Perhaps I have merely gone to rest awhile…

As I lay in my bed unable to sleep I challenged Him: Pull out another miracle. Send him back. You can do that. You’re God. At that point in my grief, I envisioned how utterly fantastic it would be for others to see what a mighty and awesome God we serve. They could witness a modern-day miracle! I was convinced the only way for this to happen was for God to send Joseph back. It would be a win/win situation! Dozens would come to know Jesus—and —I’d have Joseph home in time for supper.

Our relationship had been doomed form the start, because it was based on grief, and unlike love, grief eventually passed.

We all suffer our share of grief but we are stronger than our grief.

Throw off your grief,' doubters imply, 'and we can all go back to pretending death doesn't exist, or at least is comfortably far away.

Everybody dies, and everybody loses people they love-everybody-and that is not an excuse for you to fucking die. I love you, and I need you to be my mother, and I need you to have a life. So get over yourself.

Unsettling emotions are capable of messing up the most beautiful minds in this world.

Apart from my father, this house if filled with women. Women stop their lives; they're programmed that way. A child comes into the world and suddenly the choices grow fewer. The women seem to understand the payoff. You sacrifice, yes. You don't get to the gym, to the shrink, to the office, but you get this fragment of a moment with a person who is momentary, who will not be like this again." - 74

Anyone who has learned the Quran and holds it lovingly in his heart will 'value his nights when people are asleep, his days when people are given to excess, his grief when people are joyful, his weeping when people laugh, his silence when people chatter and his humility when people are arrogant'. In other words every moment of life will be precious to him, and he should therefore be 'gentle', never harsh nor quarrelsome, 'nor one who makes a clamour in the market nor one who is quick to anger'.

Pruned my subconscious. Discovered new shoots.

I felt a deep grief that crouched and stayed still as if it was afraid to move.

And when I look around the apartment where I now am,—when I see Charlotte’s apparel lying before me, and Albert’s writings, and all those articles of furniture which are so familiar to me, even to the very inkstand which I am using,—when I think what I am to this family—everything. My friends esteem me; I often contribute to their happiness, and my heart seems as if it could not beat without them; and yet—if I were to die, if I were to be summoned from the midst of this circle, would they feel—or how long would they feel—the void which my loss would make in their existence? How long! Yes, such is the frailty of man, that even there, where he has the greatest consciousness of his own being, where he makes the strongest and most forcible impression, even in the memory, in the heart of his beloved, there also he must perish,—vanish,—and that quickly.I could tear open my bosom with vexation to think how little we are capable of influencing the feelings of each other. No one can communicate to me those sensations of love, joy, rapture, and delight which I do not naturally possess; and though my heart may glow with the most lively affection, I cannot make the happiness of one in whom the same warmth is not inherent.Sometimes I don’t understand how another can love her, is allowed to love her, since I love her so completely myself, so intensely, so fully, grasp nothing, know nothing, have nothing but her!I possess so much, but my love for her absorbs it all. I possess so much, but without her I have nothing.One hundred times have I been on the point of embracing her. Heavens! what a torment it is to see so much loveliness passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold of it! And laying hold is the most natural of human instincts. Do not children touch everything they see? And I!Witness, Heaven, how often I lie down in my bed with a wish, and even a hope, that I may never awaken again! And in the morning, when I open my eyes, I behold the sun once more, and am wretched. If I were whimsical, I might blame the weather, or an acquaintance, or some personal disappointment, for my discontented mind; and then this insupportable load of trouble would not rest entirely upon myself. But, alas! I feel it too sadly; I am alone the cause of my own woe, am I not? Truly, my own bosom contains the source of all my pleasure. Am I not the same being who once enjoyed an excess of happiness, who at every step saw paradise open before him, and whose heart was ever expanded towards the whole world? And this heart is now dead; no sentiment can revive it. My eyes are dry; and my senses, no more refreshed by the influence of soft tears, wither and consume my brain. I suffer much, for I have lost the only charm of life: that active, sacred power which created worlds around me,—it is no more. When I look from my window at the distant hills, and behold the morning sun breaking through the mists, and illuminating the country around, which is still wrapped in silence, whilst the soft stream winds gently through the willows, which have shed their leaves; when glorious Nature displays all her beauties before me, and her wondrous prospects are ineffectual to extract one tear of joy from my withered heart,—I feel that in such a moment I stand like a reprobate before heaven, hardened, insensible, and unmoved. Oftentimes do I then bend my knee to the earth, and implore God for the blessing of tears, as the desponding labourer in some scorching climate prays for the dews of heaven to moisten his parched corn.

A grieving son was given the opportunity to write parting words on a card at his mother's funeral. He quoted the verse, "And morning came and Jesus was standing on the shore.

Healing Follows Forgiveness

Then she said, with piteous defiance, "If I could love her, the Good Lord could, and he won't be too hard on an old lady who didn't have an easy life.

Grief and anger shrink my world, and I resent this. They seem to paralyze my memory of happier times, of friends, places, things; options. Squeezed by the grip of intense, unsettling emotion, I grow smaller in my single-mindedness. I suppose it is partly because I have discarded a range of choices, impairing in some measure my freedom of will. I don't like this, but after a point I have small control over it. It makes me feel that I have surrendered to a kind of determinism, which irritates me even more. Then, vicious cycle, this feeds back into the emotion that drives me and intensifies it. The simple way of ending this situation is the headlong rush to remove its object. The difficult way is more philosophical, a drawing back, the reestablishment of control. As usual, the difficult way is preferable. A headlong rush may also result in a broken neck.

We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world--the company of those who have known suffering.

That night, before bed, he goes first to Willem's side of the closet, which he has still not emptied. Here are Willem's shirts on their hangers, and his sweaters on their shelves, and his shoes lined up beneath. He takes down the shirt he needs, a burgundy plaid woven through with threads of yellow, which Willem used to wear around the house in the springtime, and shrugs it on over his head. But instead of putting his arms through its sleeves, he ties the sleeves in front of him, which makes the shirt look like a straitjacket, but which he can pretend—if he concentrates—are Willem's arms in an embrace around him. He climbs into bed. This ritual embarrasses and shames him, but he only does it when he really needs it, and tonight he really needs it.

People would want to get safe and come to Christ because they see the evidence in your life not because you quote the scriptures to them.

And then our Mum and Dad were in love and they were truly dry-stone strong and durable and people speak of ease and joy and spontaneity and the fact that their two smells became one smell, our smell. Us.

Sorry. Don't need sorry. Not in this house. Sorry laid the hearth here. Sorry ways and sorry people and heavensent grief and heartache to make you pine for your death.

They get quieter over the years. They still whisper to you sometimes, but the world gets louder. You can see it and hear it again. There's a gap in it, where they used to be. But you get used to the gap; so used to it that you can hardly see it. And then some days, out of nowhere, you're making the tea or banging out the washing or sitting on the bus and it's there again: that aching, empty space that will never be filled.

There are some moments you won't completely heal from, those rare ones you will take torn open to the grave but throughout all the big moments that shake you up there will be countless tiny experiences that help you laugh all over again.

No. Really. I've thought about it a lot. You learn to live with it, with them. Because they do stay with you, even if they're not living, breathing people any more. It's not the same crushing grief you felt at first, the kind that swamps you, and makes you want to cry in the wrong places and get irrationally angry with all the idiots who are still alive when the person you love is dead. It's just something you learn to accommodate. Like adapting around a whole. I don't know. It's like you become... a doughnut instead of a bun.

It seemed everyone knew their place in it, but I was in the mood where I would rather be alone and look a houseplants.

Alas, I had always loved sorrow and grief, but only for myself, for myself; for them I wept in my pity. I stretched out my arms to them in my despair, accusing, cursing, and despising myself. I told them that I had done all this, I alone, that I had brought them corruption, contagion, and lies!

Every loss is valid. And every loss is not the same. You can't flatten the landscape of grief and say that everything is equal. It isn't.