Quotes About Grief

The early bats are tying the air, the heart, into knots. They fly on the wings of grief. The late butterfly follows them over the edge of the cliff where the earth becomes the air we turn into. It's called mirror vision when we see what isn't here. The kind of faith that fails at unexpected moments the way a climber reaches for a hold that will never in his life, be there. It's called despair when we open the door of a heart that no longer exists.

put the book in my pocket and step away from his body. On one side, Janet takes my hand. On the other, Candy loops her arm in mine. Good thing. Looking at Vidocq lying there, I get that disembodied feeling again, like maybe if someone wasn't holding me I'd blow away on the breeze.

Revenge is never what you think it's going to be. There's no pleasure and glory, and when it's done your grief remains. Once a man does the things you're talking about, he will never be the same, and he can never go back to who he was before. Worst of all, no matter how many enemies you kill, you are never satisfied. There is always one more who deserves it. When it becomes too easy to kill, it never ends.

It is easy to imagine grief as an ennobling, purifying emotion—uncluttering the mind of what is petty and transient, and illuminating the essential. In reality, of course, grief doesn't resolve anything, any more than a blow to the head or a devastating illness. It compounds stress and complication. It multiplies anxiety and tension. It opens fissures into cracks, and cracks into gaping chasms.

The universe wraps everything up inside it, in the end," Kaneta said. "Life, death, grief, anger, sorrow, joy. There was no boundary, then, between the living and the dead. There was no boundary between the selves of the living. The thoughts and feelings of everyone who was there at that moment melted into one. That was the understanding I achieved at that time, and it was what made compassion possible, and love, in something like the Christian sense.

She stood by his bedside and waited for him to die.

But more importantly, I think he remembered how very close I was with my own dad, who had died in 1997.

We confuse depression, sadness, and grief. However, the opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality — the ability to experience a full range of emotions, including happiness, excitement, sadness, and grief.2 Depression is not an emotion itself; it's the loss of feelings, a big heavy blanket that insulates you from the world yet hurts at the same time. It's not sadness or grief, it's an illness.

The only way to remove pain from death is to remove love from life.

You're lucky your mother died,' she said. I didn't like that. 'I'm lucky my mother died?' Between sobs she said, 'Your mother would have stayed if she could. My mother chose to leave me. She's still out there somewhere. I wish she had died instead.' I sat down next to her and put my arm around her. 'I'll never leave you.' She laid her head on my shoulder. 'I know.

Grief isn't a luxury; it's an appropriate response to loss. You don't just will it away. If you allow it to run its course, it will fade with time, but if you ignore it or pretend it doesn't exist, it only gets worse.

Grief is a powerful force that settles in the heart like a dark, heavy fog. It was familiar territory to me.

I loved you, Jim. I loved you with all my heart. And you left me. You left me when I needed you the most. It's too late, it's too late. You can't come back.

Grief is the truest evidence of love. And we should always be grateful to have something to love, even if it means that we have to lose it.

La seule chose qui soit pire que la mort, c'est d'assister à celle des gens qu'on aime.

Grief isn't a luxury, it's an appropriate response to loss. You don't just will it away. If you allow it to run its course, it will fade with time, but if you ignore it or pretend it doesn't exist, it only gets worse.

The meeting introduced me- or, perhaps no introduction was necessary- to the awful collision between the silent, unfeeling dead and immensity of feeling they generate in the living. I left the room with relief, making a mental note to avoid the bereaved at all costs and stick to the safe world inhabited by the dead, with its facts, its measurements, its certainties. In their universe, there was a complete absence of emotion. Not to mention its ugly sister, pain.

It is good to divert our sorrow for other things to the root of all, which is sin. Let our grief run most in that channel, that as sin bred grief, so grief may consume sin.

I don't really blame you for being dead but you can't have your sweater back.

Someone is digging your grave right now.

Makes you sad. All your friends are gone. Goodbye Goodbye. No more tears.

I wanted to fall down right there but I knew you wouldn't catch me because you're dead.

Because every time she looked at me, she saw him, our son, that generous boy, and it was another gut punch bending her over, another parting of her flesh, and I was one of the thousand, and my gift to her now was my echo. (from "Twenty Reasons to Stay and One to Leave")

Sometimes when things get taken away from you it feels like there's a hole at your centre where you can feel the wind blow through, that's sure.