Quotes About Grief

When you lose the most precious thing in your life, how do you go on? How do you not?

If you no longer have a child, are you still a mother?

The worst thing about knowing that Gary Fairchild had been dead for a month was seeing him every day at work.

As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn't touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn't stop.

in his wild grief Achilles cried aloud, and his mother Thetis heard him...Immediately she rose up through the water...after her came her sisters...and each one's wailing was the thin sound of the wind upon the waves.

The upside to grief is it takes away your appetite. When people say you look good they really mean it. Nature's thoughtful that way.

Yeah, but what does that even mean... heaven? Because see, I need to be able to put him somewhere, Zo. In my head, I mean. I need to be able to close my eyes and picture him and know he's okay. And just saying the word heaven doesn't help that much. Because like what is heaven, exactly? And where is it? And what do you do there?

I still hadn't cried. It wasn't that kind of pain yet. Mostly, it was just this total feeling of emptiness in my gut. Like a cannonball had been shot cleanly through my middle. And I swear to god, I actually remember reaching under my sweatshirt and touching my stomach to see if you could feel the hole from the outside.

Do you cook for yourself then?' 'I live alone, you know. Since my wife died…' 'Yes, of course, Miss Morrow told me.' 'Really? What did she say?' 'Oh, how sad it was and all that sort of thing,' said Jane rapidly with her eyes on the ground.

It's different when the person you love dies. There's an awful finality to death. But it is final. The end. And there's the funeral, family gatherings, grieving, all of those necessary rituals. And they help, believe me. When the object of your love just disappears, there's no way to deal with the grief and pain.

Why do you always wear black?" She delighted me with her answer, the correct, the only, answer. "I'm in mourning for my life. I'm unhappy.

Death is the tyrant of the imagination.

Jazz hadn't given her many details of exactly what life in the Dent house had been like, but he'd told her enough that she knew it wasn't hearts and flowers. Well, except for the occasional heart cut from a chest. And the kind of flowers you send to funerals.

Mom's already dead!" I yelled at him. "Who the hell do you think you're saving?" And he just gave me his Sad, Tired look. It's one of the three he's got, the other two being Pissed Off and Blised Out on ESPN.

I try to stay out of her way. This is just something I do. I avoid her. [...] I don't want her to see me too often, to encounter me, to deal with me. Me, this walking, talking, living, breathing, eating, shitting, farting reminder of what she's had and what she's lost. [...] I don't linger in the house. I sleep in late, stay out late, keep my bedroom door closed when I'm home. I make myself invisible, intangible. It's easier for her, it's easier for me, just easier, period.

I remember we woke up one morning at Denny's house and John Phillips called. He said, you guys okay? We said, yeah, what's wrong, what's going on? He said, well, everybody's dead over at Sharon's house at Terry Melcher's place.

Grief works its own perversions and betrayals; the shape of what we have lost is as subject to corruption as the mortal body...

When my father died in my arms it had such a profound affect on me that at that very moment when my dad passed I realized that I needed to face my own fears.

I realized that my mother was at the center of my work, because now that my mother is no longer there, there's nobody left.

I guess I just process death differently than some folks. Realizing you're not going to see that person again is always the most difficult part about it. But that feeling settles, and then you are glad you had that person in your life, and then the happiness and the sadness get all swirled up inside you.

Americans in the Civil War period were very interested in Heaven and what it might be like, because they were having to face the fact that many of their loved ones were gone and many of their loved ones, they hoped, were in this other realm called Heaven.

It's important that people understand that 'Strong Island' is just as much about this claim of reasonable fear and our need to interrogate reasonable fear as it is about my family's grief.

Grief, like Covid-19, mutates and escapes the inoculation of both time and the reassurance of loving friends. It is less sledgehammer and more screwdriver, drilling little holes in your head and heart, leaving you haunted by the ifs and buts of your decisions.

I did grieve a bit when I wasn't having the chemo anymore. I was used to sitting in the little chair and then the nurse would come and do it. It was like that was your job for that long and it was reassuring.