Best 173 quotes in «bereavement quotes» category

It is extraordinary how the house and the simplest possessions of someone who has been left become so quickly sordid. . . . Even the stain on the coffee cup seems not coffee but the physical manifestation of one's inner stain, the fatal blot that from the beginning had marked one for ultimate aloneness.

I was fascinated by the lack of a word for a parent who has lost a child. We have no word in English. I thought for sure there'd be a word in Irish but there is none. And then I looked in several other languages and could not find one, until I found the word Sh'khol in Hebrew. I'm still not sure why so many languages don't have a word for this sort of bereavement, this shadowing.

It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.

It's the only condition I know. Bitter Love, Loneliness, contempt for corruption, blind hope. It's where I live. A permanent state of bereavement. This is nothing new.

Life Lesson 3: You can't rush grief. It has its own timetable. All you can do is make sure there are lots of soft places around - beds, pillows, arms, laps.

Not a sorrow, not a burden, not a temptation, not a bereavement, not a disappointment, not a care, not a groan or tear, but has its antidote in God's rich and inexhaustible resources.

Most bereaved souls crave nourishment more tangible than prayers: they want a steak.

Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement.

One often calms one's grief by recounting it.

Pen-bereavement is a serious matter.

Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time. It's like an amputation, I feel a limb is being torn off, without which I shall be unable to function. And yet, once it is done... life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid and fuller than before.

Sudden wealth was the great insulator, second only to sudden bereavement.

Strength isn't about bearing a cross of grief or shame. Strength comes from choosing your own path, and living with the consequences.

The numbness of his loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over, racking my body with sobs. Where are you? I would cry out in my mind. Where have you gone? Of course, there was never any answer.

There are confessable agonies, sufferings of which one can positively be proud. Of bereavement, of parting, of the sense of sin and the fear of death the poets have eloquently spoken. They command the world's sympathy. But there are also discreditable anguishes, no less excruciating than the others, but of which the sufferer dare not, cannot speak. The anguish of thwarted desire, for example.

She heard him mutter, 'Can you take away this grief?' 'I'm sorry,' she replied. 'Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for.

The mystery of death, the riddle of how you could speak to someone and see them every day and then never again, was so impossible to fathom that of course we kept trying to figure it out, even when we were unconscious.

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal - every other affliction to forget: but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open - this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.

Thou, Everlasting Strength, hast set Thyself forth to bear our burdens. May we bear Thy cross, and bearing that; find there is nothing else to bear; and touching that cross, find that instead of taking away our strength, it adds thereto. Give us faith for darkness, for trouble, for sorrow, for bereavement, for disappointment; give us a faith that will abide though the earth itself should pass away--a faith for living, a faith for dying.

we are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. as we were. as we are no longer. as we will one day not be at all.

To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness

To lose what we have never owned might seem an eccentric bereavement, but Presumption has its own affliction as well as claim.

When the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

When you lose your parents, the sadness doesn't go away. It just changes. It hits you sideways sometimes instead of head-on. Like now.

Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.

A feeling of pleasure or solace can be so hard to find when you are in the depths of your grief. Sometimes it's the little things that help get you through the day. You may think your comforts sound ridiculous to others, but there is nothing ridiculous about finding one little thing to help you feel good in the midst of pain and sorrow!

...you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder, you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help... And then finally, the way through grief is grieving.

After reading the journal, I was left with the comfort of that essential recurring image of my husband putting out to sea in a boat he had rebuilt, out through the crashing surf to the calm just beyond. Of him following the coastline north, alone, seeking in that experience the joy of small moments remembered from happier days. It made me fiercely proud of him. It showed resolve. It showed bravery. It bound him to me in a more intimate way than we had ever seemed to have while together.

You are not enclosed within your bodies, nor confined to houses or fields. That which is you dwells above the mountain and roves with the wind.

All the sorrows of life are bearable if only we can convert them into a story.

At first, I planned to do just a big pot of son-of-a-bitch stew with coleslaw and cornbread, but when I thought about dogs running around the house and thirteen people trying to deal with bowls of soupy stew sloshing all over the place, I realized the idea was stupid. Then I remembered an extra turkey breast in the fridge I'd roasted as backup for a bank cocktail buffet but didn't need, as well as half a baked ham shank I'd kept to make sandwiches and nibble on. Wham! It dawned on me: a sumptuous turkey and ham casserole with mushrooms and cheese and water chestnuts and sherry. The perfect bereavement dish. And with that I could do my baked cheese grits, and my congealed pickled peach and pecan salad, and some buttermilk biscuits, and maybe a simple bowl of ambrosia and some cookies. Everything but the grits and biscuits done in advance, easy to serve and eat, no mess, and who doesn't love a great casserole and grits and congealed salad?

But I guess death is like that. It takes away from you in an instant the people you've cherished for a whole lifetime. Just like that. As simple as that. And you are suddenly left with two things: anger for having been deprived of your beloved for no reason at all; and emptiness, a vacuum that gnaws right at your heart where all the joyful moments once had been.

Change the way you think and you will change the way you feel.

Death is never easy when you know the people doing the dying.

An upturned life is righted in the box.

But I think it is so important to not rush the process of grief- & I do not mean moping & wallowing. There's a difference, & often the three get mixed into the same cake & presented as- SELFISH (& often times self-inflicted) AGONY. Not the same thing.

Christmas is such a time of struggle anyway, crammed with busy and hurry and the expectation that you will be joyful, no matter what. Then, if you’re like me, when you just sit quietly, just be, and let yourself feel what you feel, the guilt creeps in. Because you’re alive and the world is big, and you should be feeling some freakin’ Christmas spirit.

Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.

Death and parting are the same.

Does a special love withstand the test of time? Like the grass that overcomes a 500lb slab of sidewalk concrete or the proverbial flower that shatters the stone, can Christ overcome the barriers and deep darkness of mortal moments?

Do you Or do you not know You're with me more dead Than you were living Reach me some time In a dream may be Let me remember how sweet Your presence can be Reach out your hands And call to me For soon it will be Another anniversary - In a Dream Maybe

Each loss brings growth with it, and learning to handle new experiences and taking charge of your needs is part of the transformative process.

Embrace the pain

Filling ourselves and living with the energy of love feels wonderful. And because this energy resonates at a high vibrational level, it also attracts into our lives other high, vibrational experiences, many of which feel quite miraculous.

Forgiveness is a conscious choice to become more liberated and less constrained by the past. This simple act of changing one’s mindset can be the wellspring of tolerance, mercy, and compassion.

For no soul can ever be replaced, and death claims a beauty and a magnificence that will always be missed.

From a medical standpoint, the third and the most probable explanation is that Jesus was indeed dead, and what his disciples experienced were mere hallucinations evoked by the grief over the loss of their beloved teacher. It is clinically known as “Post-Bereavement Hallucinations Experiences” or PBHE.

Grief is the ultimate unrequited love. However hard and long we love someone who has died, they can never love us back. At least that is how it feels....

Grief brings many false dawns, but a solicitude of normality will undoubtedly return.

Do not go to my grave. Mary knows, I am not there. Look for me in between pages and on people’s lips. Do not go to my old school. Do not go to my old house — I am not in any of those places. Look for me in your hearts and greet me there.