Quotes About Loss

When you go to the other place, part of you doesn't come back.' What other place, honey?' He placed his watch on the bedstand. And the part of you that does?' She bit her lip and looked like she was about to punch herself in the face with both fists. 'Shouldn't.

Teddy wondered, and not for the first time, not by a long shot, if this was the day that missing her would finally be too much for him.

But as the years passed, he missed her more not less, and his need for her became a cut that would not scar over, would not stop leaking.

and two men standing up top, weeping like children because they'd somehow never known the world could get this bad.

In his time on earth, he'd learned one truth above all else when it came to power—those who lost it usually didn't see it vanishing until it was already gone.

Another death. The more I see, the less I know.

Brendan looked at the card. He kept his eyes on it when he said, "I loved her so much. I…I ain't ever going to feel that again. I mean, it don't happen twice, right?" He looked up at Whitey and Sean. His eyes were dry, but the pain in them was something Sean wanted to duck from. "It don't happen once, most cases," Whitey said.

His father was gone. He was no longer a son. He was a man without history or expectation. A blank slate, beholden to none. He felt like a pilgrim who'd pushed off from the shore of a homeland he'd never see again, crossed a black sea under a black sky, and landed in the new world, which waited, unformed, as if it had always been waiting. For him. To give the country a name, to remake it in his image so it could espouse his values and export them across the globe.

Said, My whole fucking family, you believe that shit? A week ago we all in the pink, eating dinner 'round the table—my son and daughter-in-law, my daughter and son-in-law, three grandchildren, and Bess. Just sitting and eating and jawing. And then, then, it was like God Hisself reached through the roof and into their house and closed his hand 'round the whole family and squeezed. Like we was flies on the table, he said. Like that.

And often the worst thing wasn't the victims—they were dead, after all, and beyond any more pain. The worst thing was those who'd loved them and survived them. Often the walking dead from now on, shell-shocked, hearts ruptured, stumbling through the remainder of their lives without anything left inside of them but blood and organs, impervious to pain, having learned nothing except that the worst things did, in fact, sometimes happen.

I will not dream anymore, you said. I will not set myself up for the pain. But then your team made the playoffs, or you saw a movie, or a billboard glowing dusky orange and advertising Aruba, or a girl who bore more than a passing resemblance to a woman you'd dated in high school— a woman you'd loved and lost— danced above you with shimmering eyes, and you said, fuck it, let's dream just one more time.

Change, for those who don't have a say in it, feels like a pretty word for death. Death to what you want, death to whatever plans you'd been making, death to the life you've always known.

that parish which allows the living to grasp the no longer cold hand of the beloved dead

Only marriage combines all three forms of companionship - spouse is family, best friend, and permanent companion. This is why it is widely held that while the death of a child is the most painful loss, the death of a spouse is the most disorienting one.

Do not weep, dear friend. Have I not told you that Separation is inevitable from all near and dear to us? Whatever is born, produced, conditioned, contains within itself the nature of its own Dissolution. It cannot be otherwise.

I've walked through this broken life for so long and yet the detritus of my past hails down on me at the most unexpected moments. I learned in the most difficult way imaginable that you can never fully appreciate what you have until it's taken away.

The self or wealth, which is greater? Gain or loss, which is more painful?

The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away." If we can trust God to give, then we must also trust Him when He takes away.

Glu de l'étang lait de ma mort noyée [Glue of the pool milk of my death drowned]

We need rituals for all traumas and loss, whether it is betrayal or infidelity or violence or murder. Ritual helps us heal, and ritual helped me heal and become ready to consider the person who murdered Angela, his story, his pain.

Healing does not mean reversing. Healing does not mean that what happened will never again cause us to hurt. It does not mean we will never miss those who have been lost to us or that which was taken from us. Healing means that our dignity is restored and we are able to move forward in our lives.

Till she seemed to swoon, gradually her mind went, and she passed away, everything in her was melted down and fluid, and she lay still, become contained by him, sleeping in him as lightning sleeps in a pure, soft stone.

What about Danny Thomas? Uncle Hal asks. What happened to him? Dead, Uncle Abdelhafiz says. Nice Lebanese boy. Never mind about Danny Thomas, look what happened to your whole family! Look at your cousin Farouq, Great Uncle Ziad, Auntie Seena and Jimmy's son Jalal, Aunt Jean cuts in disapprovingly. Dead, dead, dead, and in jail.

He gave you to me, she said, so low I could hardly hear her. Now I have to give you back to him, Mama.