Best 3947 quotes in «grief quotes» category

I have this strange feeling none of this is really happening. Like I'm standing far away from myself. Like nothing is real. Have you ever had a feeling like that?

... I have waited for this day, and grief faded with time. Or did it? Perhaps grief never leaves us but is merely drowned out by a flood of life overwhelming it. Perhaps the wound that bled once is bleeding still, and I did not notice it until now.

he isn't coming back whispered my head he has to sobbed my heart

I hope I’m the ghost that belongs to her.

I hear the word in the hall over and over again. Suicide. Suicide. Suicide. Did he or didn’t he? Everyone’s got a guess. Still no one knows for sure, except Gabe, but he’s not talking. Why does it even matter? He’s gone. His, ours, theirs— blame needs a place. His, ours, theirs— pain all over the place. His, ours, theirs— forgiveness missing from this place.

I held back from seeing Jacob much during those weeks. He wanted only his mother, and I wasn’t sure I could handle seeing him like that. I stopped by to pick up his siblings and take them away, but I rarely went inside the house. After several days of this, I knew I must face the sight that my daughter faced daily. Inside, I approached the couch tentatively. Would I upset him? A few times when I had visited, he’d hidden his face in a blanket. I reached out hesitantly, touching his thin arm, the skin hot and dry as paper. He didn’t move, but I could see the rise and fall of his swollen chest. Suddenly, my legs gave way, and I dropped to my knees in front of the grandson that I loved so dearly. My hand shook as I lifted it to his soft, fuzzy head. I felt as though I was in the presence of someone very holy. “I love you,” I whispered, and when he didn’t respond, an even softer whisper, “Tell Grandpa that I love him and miss him.” And then, with a groan, “Dear God, don’t let him suffer.

He will be okay. Keep courage. Courage. That's what they kept calling it. This thing they wanted him to keep. But how did you keep something you did not own? Did not know? Could not find in the hungry panic inside you?

I hope that I get to see you love what you are. To know yourself as gift and worth and truth. That you see what a huge thing it is to have the courage to break your own heart. That you have chosen wholeness — even when it has shattered you. And that you will one day see that you can be whole and broken in the exact same spaces, that they nestle side by side — and that this is the way of things. Not your punishment for wrongdoing, or for not trying hard enough — but just the way of things. That you can stand and look at yourself in a mirror and see your goodness right there, see the worth of what you bring on the surface of your skin, just like I do. That you trust there is brilliance to come. That you own what is yours to own, both the bad and the good. That you do not insist on owning it all. It was never all yours to hold

I was in error when I saw him as fixed and stable and thought I would have him forever. He was never fixed, nor stable, but always just a passing, temporary energy-burst.

It is all gone, though Peter. All of it is gone! And there is no way to get it back. 'Eat,' said Leo Matienne again, very gently. Peter looked the truth of what he had lost full in the face. And then he ate.

It takes so little... to lose it; grief and disappointment can takes one's faith away so easily that you might wake one morning and have none left.

Ik houd mezelf voor dat ik beter moet weten dan zo verbaasd te reageren, dat de dingen nu eenmaal zo lopen in de wereld, dat we allemaal sterfelijk zijn en dat ons einde zich elk moment kan aandienen. Maar een objectief beeld biedt geen greintje troost. Het hart bloedt. En daar bestaat geen remedie tegen.

I knelt in front of life, folded my hands and prayed for some more time; there couldn't be any. My heart bled and so did my tearful eyes. Time, they say, flies, but I saw it slowly passing by taking each of my tardy breaths with it as it walked out of my life...

I knew a girl, once, immortal like me-" "And she was with someone mortal?" said Alec. "What happened?" "He died," Magnus said. There was a finality to the way he said it that spoke of a deeper grief than words could paint.

I knew that suffering can purify, that it's a kind of fire that can be worth enduring, but there were degrees of it to which I chose not to subject myself.

I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. You didn't get past something like that, you got through it.

I knew I was being an idiot. But I figured if I kept being an idiot, if I didn't actually accept the truth, then the truth would become false.

I knew that I could not possibly teach; the energy and clarity that teaching requires, which I'd always taken for granted, were gone.

I know good things have happened, don't mistake an expression of pain for a lack of thankfulness.

I know how much you grieve over those who are under your care: those you try to help and fail, those you cannot help. Have faith in God and remember that He will is His own way and in His own time complete what we so poorly attempt. Often we do not achieve for others the good that we intend but achieve something, something that goes on from our effort. Good is an overflow. Where we generously and sincerely intend it, we are engaged in a work of creation which may be mysterious even to ourselves - and because it is mysterious we may be afraid of it. But this should not make us draw back. God can always show us, if we will, a higher and a better way; and we can only learn to love by loving. Remember that all our failures are ultimately failures in love. Imperfect love must not be condemned and rejected but made perfect. The way is always forward, never back.

I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures. ...We tell the story to get them back, to capture the traces of footfalls through the snow.

I know now what was happening to me, what was overwhelming me, what was about to consume and almost destroy me. Didier had even given me a name for it - assassin grief, he'd once called it: the kind of grief that lies in wait and attacks you from ambush, with no warning and no mercy. I know now that assassin grief can hide for years and then strike suddenly on the happiest day, without discernible reason or exegesis. But on that day, ... almost a year after Khader's death, I couldn't understand the dark and trembling mood that was moving in me, swelling to the sorrow I'd too long denied. I couldn't understand it, so i tried to fight it as a man fights pain or despair. But you can't bite down on assassin grief and will it away. The enemy stalks you, step for step, and knows your every move before you make it. The enemy is your own grieving heart and, when it strikes, it can't miss.

I know I could have saved your ashes to put into the ocean, but I wanted you to have the journey, all the way with the currents, to the open sea. And I know that when I finally get to see the waves washing on the shore, to hear them, I will feel you there.

I know it is difficult to believe in your own courage or fortitude when everything inside of you feels weak and shattered. But do not believe what you feel. You will not be easily broken.

I know this: there is no sense to grief. There is no pattern or shape or texture, and there are no books or stories which can lessen the pain at losing a person you have loved, and will always love. There are no rules, with loss.

I know you are afraid; you are afraid to get hurt again. But I also know that you are not meant to grieve forever.

I lay down on the ground and stared at the taunting white clouds that seemed to be laughing at me. Mocking my existence. Letting me know that even hell could be beautiful; it just wouldn’t ever be satisfying.

I lay down in the mother ash dirt among the crocuses and told her it was okay. That I'd surrendered. That since she died, everything had changed. Things she couldn't have imagined and wouldn't have guessed. My words came out low and steadfast. I was so sad it felt as if someone were choking me, and yet it seemed my whole life depended on my getting those words out. She would always be my mother, I told her, but I had to go. She wasn't there for me in that flowerbed anymore anyway, I explained. I'd put her somewhere else. The only place I could reach her. In me.

I learn so much that I previously did not know about the world of the immobile that it is hard to believe it all takes place over a few hours. At random: I learn about the casual indifference of the London cabbie to the wheelchair user and that the clearance on accessible entrances is measured in millimetres less than a knuckle. I learn how intractable it is to push a grown man around for hours and how spontaneity is the privilege of the able-bodied. In solid counterpart to all this grief, I learn about the lengths nurses are prepared to go to assist a purely recreational and ambitious project by one of their patients.

I let myself relax into the pattern of the recipe.

i let myself know that my life doesn't have to be over just because theirs are & i went ahead & painted the sun back into my sky. I am allowed to live my life.

I lived my grief; I slept mourning and ate sorrow and drank tears. I ignored all else.

I limp along through my mourning.

I live in a place of tears.

I listened as she talked, thinking that the worse the tragedy, the more people wanted to forget it--and the harder that became. Maybe that's what made it tragic; not losing the person, but losing your peace of mind. The living suffer more than the dead, after all.

I'll become someone new. Through blood and pain and ink, I can be remade.

I'll never throw these small things away. There will never be a time when I don't want them, all the tiny parts of Cal that made a life.

Ill lose myself in the pain. It might not make sense. But it works.

I'll remember you, he thinks, and as the gun carriage, with its coffin and its dented helmet pass him by, he closes his eyes. Nothing will bring them back. Not the words of comfortable men. Not the words of politicians. Or the platitudes of paid poets.

I'll remember you... I remember everyone I've lost.

I look up, and Jackson's eyes find mine. For a second, it almost feels like we're about to race into the hole to join you. Being buried alive has got to be better than whatever comes next.

I looked at her small, sunken face and wanted to scream out loud and cry. I wanted everyone in the entire world to know how much I loved my mum and to know how much my heart was breaking for her right now.

I lost someone close to me once . . . Taught me to live in the moment. Life is short, you know?

I looked at the woman crying over the doll and felt something else. I was sick of people acting against their own interests. Mooing about how to refinance the slaughterhouse. Putting skylights in the killing pen and pretending the bolt in the brain was a pathway to a better field. I paid my bill. Save your fucking pennies for a gun and a history book, I thought.

I loved and lost and survived.

I look. There it is. I feel it. The insistent pull to the heart that the hawk brings, that very old longing of mine to possess the hawk's eye. To live the safe and solitary life; to look down on the world from a height and keep it there. To be the watcher; invulnerable, detached, complete. My eyes fill with water. Here I am, I think. And I do not think I am safe.

I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother--her incomparable mother!--five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich! . . . Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night--and it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit here--writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How dazzling the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery. Seventy-four years ago twenty-four days. Seventy-four years old yesterday. Who can estimate my age today?

I loved everything about her, and I didn't care how dark she got. If anything it was what I loved the most, the veil of pain that fell across her face most of the day, and all of the night.

I loved him not; and yet, now he is gone, I feel I am alone. I check’d him while he spoke; yet, could he speak, Alas! I would not check. For reasons not to love him once I sought, And wearied all my thought To vex myself and him: I now would give My love could he but live Who lately lived for me, and, when he found ’Twas vain, in holy ground He hid his face amid the shades of death. I waste for him my breath Who wasted his for me! but mine returns, And this lorn bosom burns With stifling heat, heaving it up in sleep, And waking me to weep Tears that had melted his soft heart: for years Wept he as bitter tears. Merciful God! such was his latest prayer, These may she never share. Quieter is his breath, his breast more cold, Than daisies in the mould, Where children spell, athwart the churchyard gate, His name and life’s brief date. Pray for him, gentle souls, whoe’er you be, And oh! pray too for me!

…I love you,” he said to her, although at that point he was certain she could no longer comprehend the words. “I’d trade places with you in an instant, Mandy Valems… you never deserved this… why would anyone do something so terrible!?” A cold chill froze his heart when he saw her empty eyes again. The fluorescent lights in the dim room sparked to life all of a sudden, brightness so sharp that it startled him. In a flash, sharp and sudden, quicker than a lightning strike, the bulbs flickered and exploded with a few jingling pops.