Quotes About Grief

A single person is missing for you and the whole world is empty.

Grief was passive. Grief happened. Mourning, the act of dealing with grief, required attention.

Only the survivors of a death are truly left alone.

Like when someone dies, don't dwell on it

People grieve in different ways, some silently, some in anger, some in spite. Rarely does grief bring out the best in people, despite what local historians like to tell you.

Three women were missing; one of them, another old friend. It appeared that death haunted her like a bloodhound. First, Ryan. Now, Becky. Although they weren't the same degree of friendship with her, they were threads woven into the fabric of her life. Without them, the material snagged, weakening her structure and threatening to unravel her life

In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose a child.

See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it

How could you go about choosing something that would hold the half of your heart you had to bury?

Besides the obvious difference, there was not much distinction between losing a best friend and losing a lover: it was all about intimacy. One moment, you had someone to share your biggest triumphs and fatal flaws with; the next minute, you had to keep them bottled inside. One moment, you'd start to call her to tell her a snippet of news or to vent about your awful day before realizing you did not have that right anymore; the next, you could not remember the digits of her phone number.

Envy, after all, comes from wanting something that isn't yours. But grief comes from losing something you've already had.

when you [lose someone], it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all nerves are still a little raw

There are all sorts of experiences we can't really put a name to...The birth of a child, for one. Or the death of a parent. Falling in love. Words are like nets--we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, grief, or wonder. Finding God is like that, too. If it's happened to you, you know what it feels like. But try to describe it to someone else--and language only takes you so far.

I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. You didn't get past something like that, you got through it.

That's the paradox of loss: How can something that's gone weigh us down so much?

I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room—but eventually, you learn to live with it.

Grief is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly. It is a Band-aid being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbelly of a household is never pretty, ours no exception.

When someone dies, it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all the nerves are still a little raw.

If you think about someone you've loved and lost, you are already with them. The rest is just details.

What you had could never make up for what you'd lost.

Was there a language of loss? Did everyone who suffered speak a different dialect?

The Inuit say that the stars are holes in heaven. And every time we see the people we loved shining through, we know they're happy.

Annie turned away, her eyes glittering. 'Here's what no one tells you,' she said. 'When you deliver a fetus, you get a death certificate, but not a birth certificate. And afterward, your milk comes in, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.' She looked up at me. 'You can't win. Either you have the baby and wear your pain on the outside, or you don't have the baby, and you keep that ache in you forever. I know I didn't do the wrong thing. But I don't feel like I did the right thing, either.

Wheather it is conscious or not, you eventually make the decision to divide your life in half - before and after - with loss being that tight bubble in the middle. You can move around in spite of it; you can laugh and smile and carry on with your life, but all it takes is one slow range of motion, a doubling over, to be fully aware of the empty space at your center.