Quotes About Loss

We had survived the prison, the plain and the loss of all hope, but the women had discovered that survival is no more than putting off the moment of death

Je ne connais pas que la plaine caillouteuse, l'errance et la lente perte de l'espoir, je suis le rejeton stérile d'une race dont je ne sais rien, pas même si elle a disparu. Peut-être que, quelque part, l'humanité resplendit sous les étoiles, ignorant qu'une fille de son sang achève sa vie dans le silence. Nous n'y pouvons rien.

As William Ferris is fond of saying, "in Africa when an older person dies, a library burns.

We're never going to forget our sister Jodie.

Vicky's only been dead an hour and yet she's already a memory.

What if this really is goodbye? What if this is the last time you ever see your mum?

It makes my heart so heavy. Young men shouldn't have to die, and their parents shouldn't have to go through the rest of their lives making everything seem right by saying, 'At least my boy was brave.' Or, 'We're proud he did his bit.

People don't realize how desolate you feel. How this ache never goes; it's like a weight in the middle of the body, a bad ache in the gut every single day. And the thing is, it's not simply a case of missing a person--it's missing everything that came with that person.

And I know only too well how time can cast a sort of skin over an event—a membrane that gets thicker until a point where broaching the subject is all but impossible, even when you think you can face the grief and terror once more.

Grief should be aired, not buried.

There is no path set for this kind of shock, and for the grief that attends such terrible news.

Memories streamed over her, and she sat up, images converging in her mind's eye, the sneaker wave of grief catching her in its riptide pull once again, leaving her washed ashore, bereft, with two deep desires: to sleep forever, or to live life for them both. "Oh

Grief from the war casts a shadow that at times was dense and at others seemed as pale as a length of gauze, but it was never gone.

Every boy had grown to manhood with a family of mother, father and village. A man and woman might have lost their son but they had also lost his best friend and the boys who had played football together in the street after school and cricket on the green in summer. "Who have we lost?" the words echoed in her ears.

It could be argued that we leave everything most loved with each new experience that demands we grow.

And as she grieved, she realized that she had never trusted the world to keep herself or those she loved safe. From the moment of her mother's death, she had known that terror could be around the next corner at any moment. Had there ever been a time when she felt the clutch of fear in her gut loosen its grip, so that she could have faith in the future?

A short time ago death was the cruel stranger, the visitor with the flannel footsteps . . . today it is the mad dog in the house. One eats, one drinks beside the dead, one sleeps in the midst of the dying, one laughs and sings in the company of corpses. —GEORGES DUHAMEL, French doctor serving at Verdun in the Great War

knew only too well that the path of grief could not be scripted.

Extremes live within us all. The joy of association resides alongside the anticipation of loss. What is given will be taken, what we have is often only of value to us when it is gone." He paused, his face now held to the light once more.

Everything. But in a time of war "everything" seemed to take on a different hue, and keeping loved ones safe meant sacrifices had to be made. Men and women had died making that sacrifice in the hope that their children might live in a free world.

resembled photographs she had seen of Rudyard Kipling, when the newspapers published photographs of the author and his wife visiting the battlefields of northern France in search of their only son's final resting place.

She understood loss, understood how it could leach into every fiber of one's being; how it could dull the shine on a sunny day, and how it could replace happiness with doubt, giving rise to a lingering fear that good fortune might be snatched back at any time.

Then as each month, each year passed, it was as if the memory of you - of us… the explosion - were encased in a fine tissue-paper.' … 'I felt as if I were looking through a window to my own past, and instead of being transparent, my view was becoming more and more opaque, until eventually the time had passed. The time for coming to see you had passed.

Sometimes I feel as if, when you throw that big clod of earth onto the coffin, you're not just startin' to fill the 'ole in the ground but the big gapin' one that's been blown in your life.