Quotes About Grief

This is what a memorial is: standing still, staring at something that isn't ther

He doesn't just look upset—he looks newly blind. There is such loss in his eyes, and it permeates every other part of his body.

This is what a memorial is: Standing still, staring at something that isn't there.

You went and broke our lives. You are so much worse than a cheater. You killed something. And you killed it when its back was turned.

Whatever you had -- I don't know what it was, and that's fine. But it must not be easy for you. You miss him, and that's okay. But you have to figure that if it's too much hard to hang on, then maybe you should let go.

My beacon is gone and I'm drowning now. The storm is all around me and I can't even save myself. I don't even know if I want to. She's gone.

It was too heartbreaking to live with so many separations.

It's not easy," she says, in that voice that mothers have, that mix of unwanted knowledge and small consolation. "Whatever you had—I don't know exactly what it was, and that's fine. But it must not be easy for you. You miss him, and that's okay. But you have to figure that if it's too hard to hang on, then maybe you should let go.

loss takes as much as love does, sometimes more

One of the towers has fallen. When it's our turn to leave, it's like something in me is finally willing to listen, and suddenly I understand what it means. The tower doesn't exist anymore. Something I've seen my entire life - something so much larger than my entire life - is gone. That is my first reaction. And then I think about all the people inside. There must have been people inside.

But now it's the museum backdrop for the exhibition of grief.

Therefore he understands the grief which troubles your fainting heart, and enters into all your distresses while you are bewailing yourself and lamenting that you cry in the day time and the Lord hears not, and that in the night season you plead in vain.

Manners matter as this author memorably illustrates. Eleanor Roosevelt stubbornly kept her clout behind Adlai Stevenson was an almost visceral resistance to John F. Kennedy's charms as a newcomer to power. The sudden death of Eleanor's granddaughter shortly before JFK was to meet with her suggested that rapprochement was impossible. Kennedy's genuine gentle manners toward the grieving former first lady won her over and may have shifted the balance in an extremely close election.

We can begin to look at our own inner areas of immaturity. Specifically, we need to examine: "Where am I looking to get love rather than to give it?" The more loving we are, the less vulnerable we are to grief and loss, and the less we need to seek attachments.

When the pressure of suppressed and repressed feelings exceeds the individual's tolerance level, the mind will create an event "out there" upon which to vent and displace itself. Thus, the person with a lot of repressed grief will unconsciously create sad events in life. The fearful person precipitates frightening experiences; the angry person becomes surrounded by infuriating circumstances; and the prideful person is constantly being insulted.

When we let go of a lot of grief we have been holding over the years, our friends and family will notice a change in our facial expression. Our step will be lighter and we will look younger.

This is the pain that will inform all other pains from now on. You have lost your mother. That is the primal pain, what we call it in German. There will never be another pain like this pain. You cannot ready yourself for it because it is unimaginable.

Dad wants to talk about her death—he needs to—but unlike the rest of us, who yak incessantly about our feelings, he has no vocabulary for it and is reduced to the clichés you'd find on a sympathy card. It's like not knowing a language.

You're the man now,' she said to me after my father died, 'you're the man.' Then she turned to Popeye, our calico tom, and said, 'You're the cat now, Popeye, you're the cat,' as if she'd always worn a veil over her face and had never known we were men and cats all along.

September 12, 2001 Paris Last night on TV I watched people jump from the windows of the World Trade Center.

She'd never expressed any great interest in the outdoors, so I scattered her remains on the carpet and then vacuumed her back up.

It was as if I'd learned to grieve by watching television:

She was never certain how long she wept, and it didn't really matter. It wasn't something to be measured by clocks, cut up into minutes and seconds.

Loneliness is a kind of suffering you can alleviate. It's not something you have to endure, like grief.