Best 422 quotes in «grief and loss quotes» category

After all, the girl actually had faith in something, which was more than most people had in these dark times. It was wrong to destroy it.

After I left New York, I found the adage about time healing all wounds to be false: grief doesn't fade. Grief scabs over like scars and pulls into new, painful configurations as it knits. It hurts in new ways. We are never free from grief. We are never free from the feeling that we have failed. We are never free from self-loathing. We are never free from the feeling that something is wrong with us, not with the world that made this mess.

All of my conjuring had led only to ruin and death. Now I was a wounded witch, waiting in the forest, undone.

After losing four of his children and his wife to cholera five years ago, Shin found that he could not speak much about loss. Everything a person said sounded glib and foolish...His faith had not wavered, but his temperament had altered seemingly forever. It was as if a warm room had gotten cooler, but it was still the same room.

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

All gifts are temporary. I unwillingly surrender this one. And thank you for it. God. Or world. Whoever it was gave it to me, I humbly thank you, and pray that I did right by him, and may, as I go ahead, continue to do right by him. Love, love, I know what you are.

All that is left to one who grieves Is convalescence. No change of heart or spiritual Conversion, for the heart has changed And the soul has been converted To a thing that sees How much it costs to lose a friend it loved.

A master of origami said he tried to express with paper the joy of life, and the last thought before a man dies.

And in just this way the days after my father's death became weeks became months in the familiar ceaseless cruelty of time, carrying us ever forward even when we sit still. Time does not pass, pain grows." (p.223)

Among the dog leads, phones and hats, there would be babies hoped for and lost. All this would be remembered: missed opportunities, mislaid friends, the smile of a wife. It would be a place for lost things.

An anchor should be someone who is personally open and willing to communicate.

And sometimes when she does remember, she calls me her little angel and she knows where she is and everything is all right for a second or a minute and then we cry; she for the life that she lost I for the woman I only know about through the stories of her children.

And then a numbness overtakes you and you are unsure what is real and what is not anymore. You try to focus on the day to day but this unrealistic aura hangs over you. You wonder perhaps if all emotions have been stripped away. Whether you will ever feel again. And then the memories come flooding back and you know that you are not dead inside. The walls you have built to protect yourself gradually start to come down. You take off the mask that you have been hiding behind because it’s ok to cry.

And the pain doesn't get easier. It may lose its priority in your life, but it will always be a big fucking crater right in the center of you. The best you can do is try to keep it from swallowing you whole.

And there I lie in these damned bandages for a week. And there he lies, swathed up too, like a little mummy. And never crying. But now I like raking him in my arms and looking at him. A lovely forehead, incredibly white, the eyebrows drawn very faintly in gold dust... Well, this was a funny time. (The big bowl of coffee in the morning with a pattern of red and blue flowers. I was always so thirsty.) But uneasy, uneasy... Ought a baby to be as pretty as this, as pale as this, as silent as this? The other babies yell from morning to night. Uneasy... When I complain about the bandages she says: 'I promise you that when you take them off you'll be just as you were before.' And it is true. When she takes them off there is not one line, not one wrinkle, not one crease. And five weeks afterwards there I am, with not one line, not one wrinkle, not one crease. And there he is, lying with a ticket tied around his wrist because he died in a hospital. And there I am looking down at him, without one line, without one wrinkle, without one crease...

An inside hurt was supposed to stay inside. How strange it must be to hurt in a way that you couldn't hide.

Anytime we try to remember anyone we've loved, what we're really remembering is ourselves.

As an individual, you are entitled to your time of grief, process of grief, and right to grieve.

As the body gets weaker, the spirit gets stronger.

At 10:37pm she took her last breath. Her last breath of life was a very long exhale and then she never took another breath again.

At night, my own century-old wooden floors creaked while I dreamed of her, as she looked before radiation destroyed her famously enormous hair and removed all evidence of her addiction to homemade brownies. I woke to clammy sheets and the grim reminder that Liz’s soul was not, in fact, speaking to me from beyond the grave. Rationally, I knew that memory synapses of plump, frizzy Liz were bursting forth from the depths of my brain. Emotionally, I wanted Liz back with me, no matter what her form—but getting her back would require a leap of faith that the rest of me (the stuff surrounding that Liz-shaped hole) just couldn’t take.

At the moment the only topic she could discuss was herself. And everyone, she felt, had heard enough about her. They believed it was time that she stop brooding and think of other things. But there were no other things. There was only what had happened. It was as though she lived underwater and had given up on the struggle to swim towards air. It would be too much. Being released into the world of others seemed impossible; it was something she did not even want. How could she explain this to anyone who sought to know how she was or asked if she was getting over what happened?

Aunt-Sister would’ve said, ‘Let her go, it’s past the time,’ but I wanted the pain of mauma’s face and hands more than the peace of being without them.

Before the crisis, my life moved along like a well-planned play. I showed up and acted my part while the script directed the flow. The devastation demanded I grieve while the play of my life continued around me. I wished I could stop the spinning stage long enough to catch my breath.

Being in home is like magic moments, in a magic world, among magicians.

Below the zelkova tree time had stopped. At the foot of a little pine tree in its shadow, the most important of gems lay sleeping. Perhaps a window with a distant view of that place would allow us to yield to the natural process of forgetting.

Better to scratch the wound than bandage it: those who lose a child shouldn't be consoled; parents die to make room for their kids, not the other way around. He wasn't being cruel, he just thought a gash that deep had to be respected, not swaddled over with cuddles.

Birth is not a beginning; it’s a continuation. That lends tremendous comfort because we then understand that, equally true, death is not an end; it’s merely a continuation.

But here in the present, my mother and I had no choice but to move ahead. We worked hard, me at school, her at outselling all the other builders. We parted our hair cleanly and stood up straight, greeting company — and the world — with the smiles we practiced in the quiet of our now-too-big dream house full of mirrors that showed the smiles back. But under it all, our grief remained. Sometimes she took more of it, sometimes I did. But always, it was there.

But I'm not ready to let Winn-Dixie go.

But in all of the sadness, when you’re feeling that your heart is empty, and lacking, You’ve got to remember that grief isn’t the absence of love. Grief is the proof that love is still there.

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.

But in a home where grief is fresh and patience has long worn thin, making it through another day is often heroic in itself.

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.

But mostly, Mariam, is in Laila's own heart, where she shines with the bursting radiance of a thousand suns.

But the place where we're most broken, most empty of ourselves... is the place where we can be filled in a way that is harder for people who haven't experienced a loss.

But time soon passes. Even the deepest pain eventually loses its edge in the more vivid reality of the present; then, what once was unbearable becomes strangely familiar. And after much familiarity, it assumes the insignificance of just another milestone, ever marking the journey to higher ground.

But there isn't a single word in the universe that you can think of that would describe the way you feel right now.

But what does one say to a ghost, except to ask why he was here? I was afraid of the answer, so instead I said, 'What took you so long?

Can anyone actually find a replacement for a lost loved one? Isn't there a difference between things and human beings?

A moment of hope makes grief even more difficult to bear.

A month ago she would have been embarrassed at the confidence. Now she felt a surprising kinship. She was a citizen of the new land, a country she had never before visited, only a rumor, this vast unseen tract, its boundary exactly that of the whole world, taking up the space and shape of the world but completely unlike it. It had a different atmosphere, hard to breathe, and how heavy you were here, it pulled you down like the gravity on Jupiter.

And he had begun to feel then what he was feeling now: the complex and awful mental and physical interaction that is the beginning of acceptance, and the only counterpart to that feeling is rape.

And here's something else I learned: you lose some people that way - fast and blinding. But some people inch away from you slowly, in barely discernible steps.

…And I know you are tired, love. I know the ache lodged in your bones. I know it has been a long road and you yearn for rest and comfort and home. But I’ve also seen you twirling, barefoot in the grass by moonlight. And that moon? She is dancing with the sun and this wild spinning earth, coaxing the ocean to crash on the shore, over and over again, just for you. And I know there are stars traveling unfathomable distances and burning to dust when they enter our atmosphere so that you can breathe a little bit of light into your soul when you need it the most.

Closure is when raw memory blurs to become the folklore of life.

Continuing bonds are not an alternative to grief-work, but more a result of it.

And, now once again, Margo is enveloped by yards and yards of silence.

Cooking is about surrender.

Dancing in the rain is better than despairing in the storm.