Quotes About Grief

No mother should lose her child.

She understood that grief is not neat and orderly; it does not follow any rules. Time does not heal it. Rather time insists on passing and as it does, grief changes but does not go away.

This was how to help a family who has just lost their child. Wash the clothes, make soup. Don't ask them what they need, bring them what they need. Keep them warm. Listen to them rant, and cry, and tell their story over and over.

Time passes and I am still not through it. Grief isn't something you get over. You live with it. You go on on with it lodged in you. Sometimes I feel like I have swallowed a pile of stones. Grief makes me heavy. It makes me slow. Even on days when I laugh a lot, or dance, or finish a project, or meet a deadline, or celebrate, or make love, it is there. Lodged deep inside of me.

Grief made people guilty. Guilty for being five minutes late, for taking the wrong streetcar, for ignoring a couph or sleeping too soundly. Guilt and grief went hand in hand.

The only language she could speak was grief. How could he not know that? Instead, she said, "I love you." She did. She loved him. But even that didn't feel like anything anymore.

I've often wondered, even to this day, why during painful times some people seem to step away from themselves and make decisions that fall far out of their usual line of character and behaviour. Perhaps a natural reluctance to sit still is central, or perhaps, like the lesser animals, instinct forces us to go on even if grief has left us not up to the task…. In one fleeting moment, I stripped away the petals of my future, let them catch wind, and fly away

Help" is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors.

I wonder how you say goodbye to someone forever?

When an old person dies," Kent said, "even if that person is wonderful, he or she is still somewhat ready, and so are the people who loved them. They're like old trees, whose roots have loosened in the ground. They fall gently. But when someone like your aunt Sylvie dies—before her time—her roots get pulled out and the ground is ripped up. Everyone nearby is in danger of being knocked over.

I feel like I should be over it by now," he says. "Everyone else has forgotten about the flight. Mostly, anyway. But I feel like I still think about it all the time." ... "What happened is baked into your bones, Edward. It lives under your skin. It's not going away. It's part of you and will be part of you every moment until you die. What you've been working on, since the first time I met you, is learning to live with that.

But perhaps what felt impossible was leaving that person behind. When your love for a person is so profound that it's part of who you are, then the absence of the person becomes part of your DNA, your bones, and your skin. Charlie's and

He pictures the nursery, with its baby books and rocking chair. His body had jerked backward when he'd entered on the first day. He'd wanted to leave immediately, somehow knowing that those four walls couldn't bear both Lacey's grief and his own.

He knows the loss of Jordan will remain with him forever, even as Edward slowly leaves his parents behind. He was supposed to grow up and leave his mom and dad, after all, just like he will leave John and Lacey in the fall when he goes to college. That is part of the natural order. Edward wasn't supposed to leave Jordan, though. They were meant to age together. That loss continues to be spiked with pain; it will never be soothed.

Edward swallows. Like a dutiful student, he follows her train of thought. Voldemort equals plane crash. Dead parents equal dead parents. Harry equals him.

He closes his eyes for a second, and Edward sees the lines of pain on Gary's face; they're the same lines—carved by loss—that engrave Edward's whole self, and the boy shudders in recognition.

for a person is so profound that it's part of who you are, then the absence of the person becomes part of your DNA, your bones,

Sylvie and her sisters had known themselves under their father's gaze. And with that gaze gone, the threads that had tied their family so tightly together had loosened.

she felt tangled in a net of grief. Her father was dead, and her mother had turned her away. My soulmate would save me, she thought. He would see me, and I would feel more solid. But this brought a fresh sadness, because if she ever did meet this man, he would never have known her father. Sylvie studied the ceiling for most of the night. She felt tears deep inside her, but they couldn't seem to find a way out. She still hadn't cried.

When an old person dies," Kent said, "even if that person is wonderful, he or she is still somewhat ready, and so are the people who loved them. They're like old trees, whose roots have loosened in the ground. They fall gently. But when someone like your aunt Sylvie dies—before her time—her roots get pulled out and the ground is ripped up. Everyone nearby is in danger of being knocked

can't bear to pretend happiness." Sylvie

possible mistake, the tiredness of having spent weeks barely sleeping on someone else's couch, her father's gone-ness.

When your love for a person is so profound that it's part of who you are, then the absence of the person becomes part of your DNA, your bones, and your skin. Charlie's and Sylvie's deaths were

She was tranquil, but it was with the quietness of exhausted grief, not of resignation; and she looked back upon the past, and awaited the future, with a kind of out-breathed despair.