Quotes About Loss

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.

I cannot count the days on which I found myself driving abruptly blinded by tears.

Until now I had been able only to grieve, not mourn. Grief was passive. Grief happened.

Because the reality of death has not yet penetrated awareness, survivors can appear to be quite accepting of the loss.

You have your wonderful memories," people said later, as if memories were solace. Memories are not. Memories are by definition of times past, things gone. Memories are the Westlake uniforms in the closet, the faded and cracked photographs, the invitations to the weddings of the people who are no longer married, the mass cards from the funerals of the people whose faces you no longer remember. Memories are what you no longer want to remember.

perhaps something else besides, for Sacramento is California, and California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things had better work here, because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent.

It is the season of suicide and divorce and prickly dread, wherever the wind blows.

The heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is: the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.

Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.

We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean's bed, aware of the depth charges, now near and now far, buffeting us with recollections.

Only the survivors of a death are truly left alone. The connections that made up their life--both the deep connections and the apparently (until they are broken) insignificant connections--have all vanished.

My father was dead, my mother was dead, I would need for a while to watch for mines, but I would still get up in the morning and send out the laundry. I would still plan a menu for Easter lunch. I would still remember to renew my passport. Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.

The death of a parent, he wrote, "despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and that may cut free memories and feelings that we had thought gone to ground long ago.

Bringing him back" had been through those months my hidden focus, a magic trick. By late summer I was beginning to see this clearly. "Seeing it clearly" did not yet allow me to give away the clothes he would need.           I

They mentioned everything but one thing: that she had left the point in a bedroom in Encino.

Les gens qui ont perdu quelqu'un ont un air particulier, que seuls peut-être ceux qui l'ont décelé sur leur propre visage peuvent reconnaître. Je l'ai remarqué sur mon visage et je le remarque à présent sur d'autres. C'est un air d'extrême vulnérabilité, une nudité, une béance.

Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.

Havana vanities come to dust in Miami.

Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be.

Uno no teme por lo que ha perdido. Lo que ha perdido ya está en el muro. Lo que ha perdido ya está al otro lado de las puertas cerradas. Uno teme por lo que todavía no ha perdido. Puede que ustedes todavía no vean nada por perder. Y, sin embargo, no hay día en su vida en que yo no la vea.

They lost concentration. After a year I could read headlines, I was told by a friend whose husband had died three years before

Seuls ceux qui survivent à une mort se retrouvent véritablement seuls. Les liens qui constituaient leur existence - les plus profonds comme les plus insignifiants en apparence - ont tous disparu.

Only the survivors of a death and truly left alone

Nous ne sommes pas des bêtes idéalisées. Nous sommes d'imparfaits mortels, conscients de cette mortalité alors même que nous la rejetons, trahis par notre propre complexité, ainsi faits que lorsque nous pleurons nos pertes, c'est aussi, pour le meilleur et pour le pire, nous-mêmes que nous pleurons. Tels que nous étions. Tels que nous ne sommes plus. Tels qu'un jour nous ne serons plus du tout.