Quotes About Loss

She'd even thought she was ready for it—this beginning of the end—but now she saw her naïveté. There was no "ready" for death, especially not when it came for a young man you loved.

It is not so much about who my father was, this advice; it is what life is about. What death does to you. When I look down, of course she is not moving, her skin is cold, and I know she did not really speak to me. But she did. And so I do what I must. I stand up, feeling out my new role. I am a motherless daughter now, a sisterless woman. There is no one left of the family I was born into; there is only the family I have made.

even years from now—when the missing will be so sharp it takes your breath away. But there will be good days, too; months and years of them. In one way or another, you'll be searching for her all your life. You'll find her, too. As you grow up, you'll understand her more and more. I promise you that.

I want to imagine there will be peace when I am gone, that I will see all of the people I have loved and lost. At least that I will be forgiven. I know better, though, don't I?

In the years that she had been tying scraps to the branches, the tree had died and the fruit had turned bitter. The other apple trees were hale and healthy, but this one, the tree of her remembrances, was as black and twisted as the bombed-out town behind it.

You will always miss her. I know that from experience. There will be days—even years from now—when the missing will be so sharp it takes your breath away. But there will be good days, too; months and years of them. In one way or another, you'll be searching for her all your life. You'll find her, too. As you grow up, you'll understand her more and more. I promise you that.

The truth is, I knew loss. I didn't know grief. Now, I do.

kristin hannah

Now it would never happen; she would never get to know her father, never feel the warmth of his hand in hers, never fall asleep on the divan beside him, never be able to say all that needed to be said between them. Those words were lost, turned into ghosts that would drift away, unsaid. They would never be the family maman had promised. "Papa," she said; it was such a big word suddenly, a dream in its entirety.

She was crying for all of it at last—for the pain and loss and fear and anger, for the war and what it had done to her and to all of them, for the knowledge of evil she could never shake, for the horror of where she'd been and what she'd done to survive.

The father who went off to war was not the one who came home. She had tried to be loved by him; more important, she had tried to keep loving him, but in the end, one was as impossible as the other. In

Vianne knelt down beside Sarah, she felt for a pulse and found none. The silence turned sour, thick; all Vianne could think about was the sound of this child's laughter and how empty the world would be without it.

loss had rearranged her from the inside out. Now she knew how much family mattered and how important it was to hang on to the people you loved.

An even worse memory followed: Gaëtan. He had abandoned her after all; it filled her with the kind of bone-deep disappointment she knew so well.

They might not even have tomorrow. She hated that her first time would be bathed in sorrow, steeped in a sense of having already lost what they'd just found, but that was the world now. One

Matthew grieved for the mother he'd had. He figured Leni would grieve for the dad she wanted.

Best friends forever. They'd believed it would last, that vow, that someday they'd be old women, sitting in their rocking chairs on a creaking deck, talking about the times of their lives, and laughing. Now she knew better, of course. For more than a year she'd been telling herself it was okay, that she could go on without a best friend. Sometimes she even believed it.

Memories--even the best of them--faded.

The pain of him leaving kept expanding inside of her, taking up more and more space.

She knew about death, about the grief that ripped you apart and left you broken forever.

When he finally found the words to express himself, his grief had shown itself to be bottomless, terrifying.

Maybe it had all happened the way it needed to, maybe they'd each crossed their own oceans -hers of damaged love and loss, his of pain- to be here again together, where they belonged.

That was the thing about her dad: he might be moody and sharp-tempered, even a little scary sometimes, but that was just because he felt things like love and loss and disappointment so keenly.

Perhaps that's why I find myself looking backward. The past has a clarity I can no longer see in the present. I want to imagine there will be peace when I am gone, that I will see all of the people I have loved and lost. At least that I will be forgiven.