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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 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)

…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.

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

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...

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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

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.

Cooking is about surrender.

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

Dead. Even in the silence of my mind I cannot think the word. I cannot acknowledge this most obvious and terrible of truths.

Death finds you in such strange poses. How long can you cry, until the rivers gone and dry.

Death is not the villain of the piece. It is the next phase of life in unfamiliar clothing.

Death leaves trails of mutes.

Death will paint everything a different shade of remorse. You’ll feel guilty that you’re still breathing. But you can’t stop. You’ll feel guilty for wanting to laugh again. And it will be awful the first time that you do. You’ll feel guilty for just about everything at first. And someday, at some point, you’ll start to feel guilty . . . for forgetting to feel guilty. But of all Heaven’s lessons, guilt isn’t one of them. You don’t need to hold on to it. It doesn’t need to be a practice and it shouldn’t be your life. Heaven would never approve of your guilt. Because Heaven has no regrets.

Do not weep for those who have found Death's embrace early, for they weep for us that linger on in this mortal world of pain.

Don't be afraid of the space between what has been and can be. Simply spend a quiet moment to wrap and warm yourself within your own arms . . . then step forward. There is a door just ahead, opening into the light of a new time." ​ - From Letters for Grace

Do what you love and own who you are. Time is precious ad death is real. So is Art: It defies them both

Do what you love and own who you are. Time is precious and death is real. So is Art: It defies them both

Do you ever miss it, not being a doctor anymore?" I shook my head, frowned a little. "I really don't. Something delicate and essential broke inside me when Isabella died. It will never be repaired, Kyle, at least I don't think so. I couldn't be a doctor now. I find it hard to believe in healing anymore.

[E]scaping is its own special brand of pain, and tied to you always are the strings of the souls who didn't save themselves. ~ "The Worst You Ever Feel

Even as grief flickers in me, I feel something like a first kiss happening — a meeting with someone dearly amazing, life-changing, lucky....

Every day, I lost a little bit more of him, and I was afraid that he would slip away until nothing remained but an old photo and a faint longing, a half smile as I struggled to remember some thing he once taught me on a midnight long ago. I had to find a way to hold on to him. I had to find a way to hold on to myself.