Quotes About Loss

Anger and jealousy are two of the most powerful motivators known to man. In fact, someone said to me that jealousy is fear of loss brought into the immediate present. Think about that. If you see someone else walking away with something you want, that's fear of loss right before your eyes.

It is said a man doesn't get old while his mother lives. I think it's true. You are always a child in her eyes. It is irritating in the extreme. But you know, when they have gone, you'd give the earth just to hear them treating you like a child once more.

An enemy is like a man's most prized flower. It brings him joy to see it buried in the ground.

How many hopes and dreams are trapped within these bones? How many wonders lie never to be discovered? This is what war is. Desolation, despair and loss. There are no victors.

It is said that the gates of paradise can only be opened by the tears of those left behind. I do not know whether that be true. It should be, I think.

War. Such a little word, such a depth of agony. Blood, death, conquest, starvation, plague, and horror.

But remember this: to have may be taken from you, to have had never.

think I loved my Danny more. And I think I know why.

He had watched her, after all, mourn her husband's death and it had been for her in part the discovery that grief could attach itself with permanence - something Ishmael had already discovered. It attached itself and then it burrowed inside and made a nest and stayed. It ate whatever was warm nearby, and then the coldness settled in permanently. You learned to live with it.

Edward   Once they're dead, I find they keep changing. You think you've got hold of them. And it's like you say, 'Oh I see. So that's what she was like.' But then they change again in your memory. It drives you crazy. Now I'd like to find out just who she was.

For the loss of the team, a Seattle Post-Intelligencer snap poll found that 40 percent of readers blamed Schultz the most, followed by 15 percent for Nickels and 11 percent for Bennett.

His life was a party which tragically came to an early end.

She might be all right, Freddy said. But she sure is dead.

People often think there is no way to heal from severe loss. I believe that is not true. You heal when you can remember those who have died with more love than pain, when you find a way to create meaning in your own life in a way that will honor theirs. It requires a decision and a desire to do this, but finding meaning is not extraordinary, it's ordinary. It happens all the time, all over the world.

I don't want to have to tell them that my life lost all its meaning when they died. They loved me, and they wouldn't want that.

Life gives us pain. Our job is to experience it when it gets handed to us. Avoidance of loss has a cost. Having our pain seen and seeing the pain in others is a wonderful medicine for both body and soul.

After all my years working with the dying and the grieving, I have found that in this lifetime, the ultimate meaning we find is in everyone we have loved. Your loved one's story is over. For unknown reasons, their time on earth has drawn to a close, but yours continues. I can only invite you to be curious about the rest of the story of your life.

grief is optional in this lifetime. Yes, it's true. You don't have to experience grief, but you can only avoid it by avoiding love. Love and grief are inextricably intertwined. As Erich Fromm says, "To spare oneself from grief at all costs can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability

talk to other parents who are broken and bitter and feel robbed at the loss of a child. They want to know why I wasn't destroyed by Jim's death. I tell them that his life had meaning even though it was so short, and perhaps he wasn't meant to be here any longer. Being with him when he died was a gift, and I've learned to trust in God, his sovereignty, and his faithfulness. I

It may feel like all meaning left with the person you lost, but that is not true. You can continue to connect meaningfully with those who are still living, and you can form new connections, too. Those connections do not diminish your love for the person who died. They will only enhance it.

Maybe your meaning will come by finding rituals that commemorate your loved one's life, or by offering some kind of contribution that will honor that person. Or the loss of your loved one may cause you to deepen your connection to those who are still with you, or to invite back into your life people from whom you've been estranged. Or it may give you a heightened sense of the beauty of the life we are all so privileged to have as long as we remain on this earth.

are attempts to regain some of the control I felt I lost when my mother died.

Ultimately, meaning comes through finding a way to sustain your love for the person after their death while you're moving forward with your life.

After all my years working with the dying and the grieving, I have found that in this lifetime, the ultimate meaning we find is in everyone we have loved.