Quotes About Loss

I don't want a new man. I'll be dead someday, my mother said. And then what? You'll wish you had someone. I have a hamster.

So sorry for your loss, Grandma said to Monica. My condolences. Yeah, whatever, Monica said. Grandma leaned into the casket for a close look. What are you gonna do, kiss him? Monica asked. I was trying to see where they cut him up when they took his brain out, Grandma said. Monica sucked in some fake smoke. You'd have to unzip his pants for that one.

You're afraid if you catch this guy, you'll lose the excitement in your life and the goal-oriented sense of purpose that drives you.

I set the box of biscuits on the counter and went to the bathroom, and when I returned the biscuits were gone. Only a slobbery, mangled corner of the box remained.

She's lived with my parents since Grandpa Mazur took the big escalator to the heavenly food court in the sky.

I love you," I said to Grandma. "I love you, too," Grandma said. "Maybe that's why God gave us death. So, we remember to love what's alive.

Grandma moved in with my mom and dad when Grandpa went upstairs to live with Jesus.

The story of her life. God gave you everything just to take it away. Just so you knew exactly what you were missing.

Why does each man kill the thing he loves?...you killed it by accident. Thinking you were doing something else. It was a cherished vase that broke while you were cleaning it. The phone rang and you dropped it. Shattering, when all you wanted was to keep it safe.

Do you ever want to go home?' I asked Paul. He brushed an ash from my face. 'It's the century of the displaced person,' he said. 'You can never go home.

It was only natural to want to destroy something you could never have.

And in one drawer, twenty-seven names for tears. Heartdew. Griefhoney. Sadwater. Die Tranen. Eau de douleur. Los rios del corazon.

She wanted to wake up like Dorothy and see Michael's face peering over the side of the bed, laughing. WHY, YOU JUST HIT YOUR HEAD. But it was not a dream and there was no Kansas and he was never coming back.

How it was. How it was that the earth could open up under you and swallow you whole, close above you as if you never were. Like Persephone snatched by the god. The ground opened up and out he came, sweeping her into the black chariot. Then down they plunged, under the ground, into the darkness, and the earth closed over her head, and she was gone, as if she had never been.

People losing each other, their hands slipping loose in a crowd.

I thought how tenuous the links were between mother and children, between friends, family, things you think are eternal. Everything could be lost, more easily than anyone could imagine.

I hadn't understood at the time. If sinners were so unhappy, why would they prefer their suffering? But now I knew why. Without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my past was my life. It wasn't like I didn't know where all this remembering got you, all that hunger for beauty and astonishing cruelty and ever-present loss.

Rena squinted at me, blowing a strand of her matte black hair out of her face, exasperated. 'You get good price for that. What you saving it for, tea with little Tsarevich Alexei? They shot him in 1918.' She took the dress out of the bag, shook it and hung it back up. 'Is fact.

God gave you everything just to take it away. Just so you knew exactly what you were missing.

It was a shrine. Josie hadn't thought to do that. She had no shrine, no candles. She only knew how to kill the thing she loved

One death did not salve another.

But things coming out of her, visible to the world? It was in a strange way another loss. You gave things away you couldn't afford to lose. Private things. You showed yourself and you couldn't take it back.

This ragged heart," she said, pulling at her kimono. "I should rip it out and bury it for compost.

My words, that's what she wanted. What's this? she kept asking. What's this? But how could I tell her? She'd taken all the words.