Quotes About Grief

and two men standing up top, weeping like children because they'd somehow never known the world could get this bad.

That's what ghosts are—they're testaments to what never should have happened and must be fixed before their spirits leave this world.

He feels that today he has developed a kinship with grief and trauma and nurses' asses.

Said, My whole fucking family, you believe that shit? A week ago we all in the pink, eating dinner 'round the table—my son and daughter-in-law, my daughter and son-in-law, three grandchildren, and Bess. Just sitting and eating and jawing. And then, then, it was like God Hisself reached through the roof and into their house and closed his hand 'round the whole family and squeezed. Like we was flies on the table, he said. Like that.

And often the worst thing wasn't the victims—they were dead, after all, and beyond any more pain. The worst thing was those who'd loved them and survived them. Often the walking dead from now on, shell-shocked, hearts ruptured, stumbling through the remainder of their lives without anything left inside of them but blood and organs, impervious to pain, having learned nothing except that the worst things did, in fact, sometimes happen.

Change, for those who don't have a say in it, feels like a pretty word for death. Death to what you want, death to whatever plans you'd been making, death to the life you've always known.

that parish which allows the living to grasp the no longer cold hand of the beloved dead

Life would be just a neutral wasteland if one always ran away from the joys of love merely because one knew that pain and grief might be involved too.

Despair can come from deep grief, but it can also be a defense against the risks of bitter disappointment and shattering heartbreak. Resignation and cynicism are easier, more self-soothing postures that do not require raw vulnerability and tragic risk of hope. To choose hope is to step firmly forward into the howling wind, baring one's chest to the elements, knowing that, in time, the storm will pass.

Till she seemed to swoon, gradually her mind went, and she passed away, everything in her was melted down and fluid, and she lay still, become contained by him, sleeping in him as lightning sleeps in a pure, soft stone.

What about Danny Thomas? Uncle Hal asks. What happened to him? Dead, Uncle Abdelhafiz says. Nice Lebanese boy. Never mind about Danny Thomas, look what happened to your whole family! Look at your cousin Farouq, Great Uncle Ziad, Auntie Seena and Jimmy's son Jalal, Aunt Jean cuts in disapprovingly. Dead, dead, dead, and in jail.

He splayed a hand out over the photographs, trembling fingers not quite touching the shiny surface, and then he turned and leaned toward me, slowly, with the improbable grace of a tall tree falling. He buried his face in my shoulder and went very quietly and thoroughly to pieces.

Where d'ye think he is now? Jenny said suddenly. Ian, I mean. He glanced at the house, then at the new grave waiting, but of course that wasn't Ian any more. He was panicked for a moment, for his earlier emptiness returning-but then it came to him, and, without surprise, he knew what it was Ian had said to him. On your right, man. On his right. Guarding his weak side. He's just here, he said to Jenny, nodding to the spot between them. Where he belongs.

No. Ye loved him. I canna hold it against either of you that ye mourn him. And it gives me some comfort to know ... He hesitated, and I reached up to smooth the rumpled hair off his face. To know what? That should the need come, you might mourn for me that way, he said softly.

Don't cry, Sassenach, he said, so softly I could barely hear him.

Ye dinna stop loving someone just because they're deid," she said reprovingly. "I canna suppose they stop lovin' you, either.

Did that mean she had not cared deeply for any of her husbands? I wondered. Or only that she was a woman of great strength, capable of overcoming grief, not once, but over and over again?

He stood for a moment, bereavement a sudden, small tear in his soul.

All loss is one, and one loss becomes all, a single death is the key to the gate that bars memory.

Damn Frank!" he said ferociously. "Damn all Randalls! Damn Jack Randall, and damn Mary Hawkins Randall, and damn Alex Randall—er, God rest his soul, I mean," he amended hastily, crossing himself.

And so he began haltingly to speak—in Gaelic, as it was the only tongue that didn't seem to require any effort. He understood that he was to speak of what filled his heart, and so began with Scotland—and Culloden. Of grief. Of loss. Of fear.

All loss is one, and one loss becomes all, a single death the key to the gate that bars memory.

It was what you did when someone died; turned toward God and at least acknowledge the fact.

I cried then, holding nothing back. For empty years, yearning for the touch of a hand. Hollow years, lying beside a man I had betrayed, for whom I had no tenderness. For the terrors and doubts and griefs of the day. Cried for him and me and for Mary MacNab, who knew what loneliness was—and what love was, as well.