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Quotes About Grief

People who hadn't suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.
~ Anne Tyler
He had been forty-three years old—too young to think of making funeral plans. So all of that was left to Willa
~ Anne Tyler
He didn't talk about Derek at all and he avoided any contact with Willa or his brother, instead spending his evenings shut away in his room twiddling tunelessly on his guitar. Sean was the opposite: he followed Willa around pestering her for every detail of his father's death.
~ Anne Tyler
What nobody understood about David, with the possible exception of Greta, was that he had suffered a very serious loss in his life. Two losses, in fact. Two very dear children: Emily and Nicholas. It was true that these days there happened to be two very dear grown-ups who were also named Emily and Nicholas, but they weren't the same people. It was just as if those children had died. He'd been in mourning ever since.
~ Anne Tyler
best cure for grief was shopping, especially for things to wear.
~ Anne Tyler
We've lost the last remaining chick in our nest! It's natural we would feel low." And she did feel low; no question about it. In many ways David was the child closest to her heart, although she'd expected to feel closer to her girls. After Alice and Lily left home it was just David and his parents, and the chaos died down and sometimes Mercy was able to hold actual brief conversations with him.
~ Anne Tyler
But my family's passing came so sudden. Left me strap-hanging in empty space, like.
~ Anne Tyler
In a way," I told Peggy, "it's like the grief has been covered over with some
~ Anne Tyler
Amanda said, "Isn't it interesting: people never seem to bring liquor when somebody dies, have you noticed? Why not a case of beer? Or a bottle of really good wine? Just these everlasting casseroles, and who eats casseroles nowadays?
~ Anne Tyler
Two losses, in fact. Two very dear children: Emily and Nicholas. It was true that these days there happened to be two very dear grown-ups who were also named Emily and Nicholas, but they weren't the same people. It was just as if those children had died. He'd been in mourning ever since. And now
~ Anne Tyler
O dead one, why did you die in the springtime? You haven't yet tasted the squash, or the cucumber salad.
~ Anne Tyler
I breathed and breathed and did feel some calmness enter in, though it was, as always, shot with a sense of loss. Loss and fear.
~ Sebastian Faulks
Until she had had children of her own she had not been able to contemplate the death of either of her parents; when the subject had arisen, in conversation or in her own imagining, she had said only: I just don't know what I'd do.
~ Sebastian Faulks
What had gone completely was the memory of what made her human, her ways and her thoughts. The withholding of these details was like a torment. When he tried to bring her back to mind, he could not hear the voice, he could not imagine one aspect of her, the way she looked or talked, the expressions of her face, her walk, her gestures. It was as though she were dead and he bore the responsibility for killing her.
~ Sebastian Faulks
If the men on the Andrea Gail had simply died, and their bodies were lying in state somewhere, their loved ones could make their goodbyes and get on with their lives. But they didn't die, they disappeared off the face of the earth and, strictly speaking, it's just a matter of faith that these men will never return. Such faith takes work, it takes effort. The people of Gloucester must willfully extract these men from their lives and banish them to another world.
~ Sebastian Junger
Back in Gloucester, Chris Cotter has a similar dream. Bobby appears before her, all smiles, and she says to him, "Hey, Bobby, where you been?" He doesn't tell her, he just keeps smiling and says, "Remember, Christina, I'll always love you," and then he fades away. "He's always happy when he goes and so I know he's okay," says Chris. "He's absolutely okay.
~ Sebastian Junger
They had not yet started out across a continent of grief that a lifetime of walking could not cover.
~ Sebastian Junger
As a girl rebelling against my father's dogma, I had scoffed at Job for accepting God's consolation of a new wife and new children. But I, most Joblike, when Giles was dead, embraced Kit, and when Kit conveyed that he was not coming back, it was the messenger himself, Ahab, whom I immediately loved. If Mother and Liberty were gone, then here was Susan to unburden me of love. Not to be loved but to love lightened my load of grief and gave value and direction to my life.
~ Sena Jeter Naslund
We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delineaments, weight and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all.
~ Setterfield Diane
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her?
~ Shakespeare
It seemed a shame that Aunt Jessie and Uncle Nate spent so much time chasing the dead. And yet, I could see how they were trying so hard to keep the dead alive
~ Sharon Creech
She was lying, still and gray, on the bed. A little dribble was coming out of one side of her mouth. Gramps was leaning over her, whispering in her ear. A nurse said, "I don't think she can hear you." "Of course she can hear me," Gramps said. "She'll always be able to hear me.
~ Sharon Creech
He'd passed the longest night of his life locked in mortal combat with his ghosts, calling up and then disavowing twenty years of memories. He would banish that bitch from his heart if it meant cutting her out with his own dagger. And when at last he allowed himself to grieve, he did so silently and unwillingly, his tears hidden by the darkness, his rage congealing into a core of ice.
~ Sharon Kay Penman
Five years is a long time to grieve, Llewelyn said at last, and Davydd shook his head. Grief heals, he said. Guilt does not.
~ Sharon Kay Penman