Grieving Quotes

Verily, a man should not cling to those who have passed, for he will likely neglect service to the living.

I need to stop running back to you in my mind all the time.

A kiss….….. is just a kiss….Until it’s all you reminisce.(Then the memory becomes your most treasured possession.)

A word of consolation may sweetly touch the ear.Now and then a quiet songwill clear the mind of fear.A simple act of kindnesscan ease a load of care.Stories told in memorydiminish all despair.A whispered prayer of comfortdraws angel arms around.Counting blessings, great and small,helps gratitude abound.These acts, all sympathetic,will kindly play their part.But seldom do they dry the tearsshed mutely in the heart.

As he watches the sun rise, what grieves him is that he failed her. He thinks of the terror she felt. They tell him it was quick, as if that will somehow confine the horror.

Sometimes all you can do is hug a friend tightly and wish that their pain could be transferred by touch to your own emotional hard drive.

Fear manifested itself as a physical presence that seemed to dominate the public sphere. Time almost stopped. Even without confirmation I could sense that something had gone terribly wrong.

There need not be a purpose to a person's death, other than that they have lived the length of their days on this Earth and now begin the longer part of their existence.

It is the deepest of wrongs I am driven to write…. And losing you was one of them.

The truth of it was he didn't want her. He wanted Mary Kate with every cell of his body. He missed everything about her. The feel of her sleeping at his side. Her gentle snores. Her soft brown curls tickling his nose enough to wake him from a sound sleep even on nights when he needed it most. Her smile. The smell of her. At odd moments he thought he had heard her laughter, or he'd catch a glimpse of her in the corner of an eye, but all of it was a lie, and every time it happened it was as if someone had ripped a deep wound in his chest. The pain was raw enough to make him want to take a razor to his wrist, but each time he considered acting upon the idea something stopped him, and so, he stumbled on barely alive and wishing for an end. At times he couldn't breathe, couldn't move without wanting to scream.

How do you love someone and just… walk away? Just like that. You just, go on as normal…. You get up, get dressed, go to work… How can you do that? How can you be okay with that?

It is regret for the absence of his loved one which causes a mourner to grieve: yet it is clear that this in itself is bearable enough; for we do not weep at their being absent or intending to be absent during their lifetime, although when they leave our sight we have no more pleasure in them. What tortures us, therefore, is an idea.

He was a practical man: give him a sensitive technical instrument, and he could maintain it; something broken, and he could mend it, meditatively, efficiently. But confronted by his grieving wife, he felt useless.

It’s funny how we say a person ‘made’ us when they actually broke us.Sort of like how I say ‘funny’... but I actually mean sad.

There’s only ever been one person I’ve looked at and thought…‘I could quite easily spend the entire rest of my life with that man’.And sooner or later I need to accept that he’s spending it with somebody else.

If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever." A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her. But not to her motherhood. The specifically maternal happiness must be written off. Never, in any place or time, will she have her son on her knees, or bathe him, or tell him a story, or plan for his future, or see her grandchild.

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.

I miss her all the time. I know in my head that she has gone. The only difference is that I am getting used to the pain. It's like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, you forget it's there and keep falling in. After a while, it's still there, but you learn to walk round it.

How many times did we pass each other before we met? If only I’d known…. I would have searched for you endlessly.If only I’d found you before it was already too late.

Of course, Mary Magdalene would have very little tolerance for the Christian platitudes and vapid optimism that seem to swirl around these kinds of tragic events. Those platitudes are tempting, but they're nothing but luxuries for people who've never had demons (or at least have never admitted to them). But equally, she would reject nihilism, or the idea that there is no real meaning in life or death - ideas present in so much of postmodernity. Those ideas, too, are luxuries, but they are for those who have never been freed from demons.

It’s the intricate details you miss the most. For me, it’s the soft lines around the eyes when he smiles… Or that look he gave me sometimes that I cannot begin to describe - but I would know it if I saw it again.It was the look that gave him away.I’d know that look anywhere…It used to be my everything.

Live your life in such a way that you'll be remembered for your kindness, compassion, fairness, character, benevolence, and a force for good who had much respect for life, in general.

How can I grieve what is still in motion?" I ask her. "Shoes are still dropping all over the place. I´m not kidding," I say. "It´s Normandy out there.

Why write wrong if the writing won’t right the wrong? (90)

Perhaps I was easier to shake off for you because you’re such a together person. I was just an extra layer on the outside… like a blanket you could shrug off and feel just the same…. except maybe a little colder….But I was always a broken person that was haphazardly held together by little more than my own strength. And so you just seeped in the cracks and mingled with my insides until you became an inseparable part of me. And as painful as that is, it still kind of warms me to know I will always carry a part of you with me.

I still think of you every day.But I’m trying not to let it hurt me with the same intensity that it used to.

Reading is, with friendship, one of the surest contributions to the work of grieving. It helps us, more generally, to grieve for the limitations of our life, the limitations of the human condition.

It’s times like this…. when it’s over a year later and I’m still crying over you that I want to turn to you and say: See…. This is why I asked you never to kiss me.

Death is harder on those who are left behind.

There's always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you'd never stop grieving.

The last time I felt alive – I was looking into your eyes.Breathing your air…. touching your skin…… Saying goodbye….The last time I felt alive…. I was dying.

I think first of the children. What the hell am I supposed to tell them? Then I think about money, the house, all those things no widow will tell you ever crossed her mind.

You can’t truly heal from a loss until you allow yourself to really FEEL the loss.

How I wish I could undo it all … take it all back…All those years I spent unhappy with him …. when I should have been looking for you.

My sister will die over and over again for the rest of my life. Grief is forever. It doesn't go away; it becomes a part of you, step for step, breath for breath. I will never stop grieving Bailey because I will never stop loving her. That's just how it is. Grief and love are conjoined, you don't get one without the other. All I can do is love her, and love the world, emulate her by living with daring and spirit and joy.

Though these words will never find you, I hope that you knew I was thinking of you today….. and that I was wishing you every happiness.Love Always,The girl you loved once.

Her death...brought me as nothing else could do to know and end my jealousy of God. It saved her faith from assault.

It happened in New York, April 10th, nineteen years ago. Even my hand balks at the date. I had to push to write it down, just to keep the pen moving on the paper. It used to be a perfectly ordinary day, but now it sticks up on the calendar like a rusty nail.

I could simply kill you now, get it over with, who would know the difference? I could easily kick you in, stove you under, for all those times, mean on gin, you rammed words into my belly. (p. 52)

Your smile and your laughter lit my whole world.

To ease a grieving heart is the world's greatest pleasure, more so, when the heart is yours.

Though life has fated that we never cross paths again, don’t ever feel alone. For we are parallel …. and I will always be by your side.

He was like the other half of myself,' says Boris...Ulrich says, 'You haven't lost {him}, you know. I don't know if it helps to say that. I lost a friend once myself, and I know how it goes.'He'll find his way inside you, and you'll carry him onward. Behind your heartbeat, you'll hear another one, faint and out of step. People will say you are speaking his opinons, or your hair has turned like his.'There are no more facts about him -- that part is over. Now is the time for essential things...Gradually you'll grow older than him, and love him as your son.'You'll live astride the line that separates life from death. You'll become experienced in the wisdom of grief. You won't wait until people die to grieve for them; you'll give them their grief while they are still alive, for then judgment falls away, and there remains only the miracle of being.

Though it’s reasons to burn may vary... you are always the fuel of my fire.

Do you think that God would separate me from my husband if I killed myself? I feel as though I am going out of my mind at times. Wouldn’t God understand that I just want to be with him?

She released her grievances like handfuls of birdseed: They are there, and they are gone.

The present is too often squandered grieving the past or fearing the future, which makes the present nothing more than a cheap facsimile of what was or what will be instead of what it could be.

I didn’t love you to seek revenge.I didn’t love you out of loneliness or unhappiness.I didn’t love you for any of the misguided reasons that time might convince you I did.I just loved you because you’re you.

It’s painful, loving someone from afar.Watching them – from the outside.The once familiar elements of their life reduced to nothing more than occasional mentions in conversations and faces changing in photographs…..They exist to you now as nothing more than living proof that something can still hurt you … with no contact at all.

Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.But no, that is not quite accurate. There is one place where her absence comes locally home to me, and it is a place I can't avoid. I mean my own body. It had such a different importance while it was the body of H.'s lover. Now it's like an empty house.

In trying moments, you must keep trying... In grieving times, don't think of giving up! Employ your passion to work; something great to enjoy is approaching!

He looked at me like I was the stars when all I’d ever felt like was the dark nothingness between them.

I miss you so much in these wee morning hours,when the depth of the night sets my spirit free.When the forest is dark, and there doesn’t have to be anything in the worldbut the beauty I pull out of it.I miss you throughout the day,as I come across glories and wonders that could easily overwhelm me,but just dull because you’re not here to enjoy them.

I don’t think you ever really understood….…. All the love I had in the world went to you.

The only place I ever felt at home was with you. There isn’t a place for me anywhere anymore… I’ve been evicted.

The pain of your loss will return. Less, but still considerable. I know you've worked hard to release it, but it can still take hold of you. I will help you sing away the fury, but I will not bear it for you.

The great love is gone. There are still little loves - friend to friend, brother to sister, student to teacher. Will you deny yourself comfort at the hearthfire of a cottage because you may no longer sit by the fireplace of a palace? Will you deny yourself to those who reach out to you in hopes of warming themselves at your hearthfire?

oh. she heard it too-no waters coursing, canyon empty, sun soundless- and the beast your life nowhere hiding (p. 103)

It hurts that I was just one page in the book of your life…But what hurts more is knowing you’ll revise that chapter someday….….. and you’ll erase me completely.

Grief came in waves, sometimes big, sometimes small, but even on the calmest days, the grief remained. The tide still came ashore.