Quotes About Loss

Clara tried to give the eulogy, but couldn't speak. Her words stuck at the lump in her throat. And so Myrna took over, holding her hand while Clara stood beside her.

said Myrna after a moment. 'Loss of parents, loss of loves, loss of jobs. So we have to find a higher meaning in our lives than these things and people. Otherwise we'll lose ourselves.

Why were there no words that felt? Words that when you touched them you'd feel what was intended? The chasm left by the loss of Madeleine? The lump in the throat that fizzed and ached. The terror of falling asleep knowing that on waking she'd relive the loss, like Prometheus bound and tormented each day. Everything had changed. Even her grammar. Suddenly she lived in the past tense. And the singular.

Clara rocked back and forth, back and forth, cradling her loss. Earlier in the day she'd felt someone had scooped her heart and her brain right out of her body. Now they were back, but they were broken. Her brain jumped madly about the place, but always back to that one scorched spot.

Entitlement was, she knew, a terrible thing. It chained the person to their victimhood. It gobbled up all the air around it. Until the person lived in a vacuum, where nothing good could flourish. And the tragedy was almost always compounded, Myrna knew. These people invariably passed it on from generation to generation. Magnified each time. The sore point became their family legend, their myth, their legacy. What they lost became their most prized possession. Their inheritance.

The sore point became their family legend, their myth, their legacy. What they lost became their most prized possession. Their inheritance.

Everyday for Lucy's entire dog life Jane had sliced a banana for breakfast and had miraculously dropped one of the perfect disks on to the floor where it sat for an instant before being gobbled up. Every morning Lucy's prayers were answered, confirming her belief that God was old and clumsy and smelt like roses and lived in the kitchen. But no more. Lucy knew her God was dead. And she now knew the miracle wasn't the banana, it was the hand that offered the banana.

Clara knew that grief took a terrible toll. It was paid at every birthday, every holiday, each Christmas. It was paid when glimpsing the familiar handwriting, or a hat, or a balled-up sock. Or hearing a creak that could have been, should have been, a footstep. Grief took its toll each morning, each evening, every noon hour as those who were left behind struggled forward. Clara wasn't sure

You didn't just lose a loved one. You lost your heart, your memories, your laughter, your brain and it even took your bones. Eventually, it all came back, but different. Rearranged.

So ingrained, Gamache knew, was our training to be polite that even in the midst of a terrible personal loss people still smiled.

Strong enough to grieve.

I don't know about normal human beings, but for alcoholics it's lethal. A secret that rotten will drive you to drink. And the drink will drive you to your grave. But not before it steals everything from you. Your loved ones, your job, your home. Your dignity. And finally, your life.

He sat quietly for a moment, lost in what was now and forever the past. The scene he described would never be repeated. That overheard sound would never be heard again.

Was the final fear that, in losing his fears, he would also lose his joy?

Screw off. Leave me alone!' Now she rounded on him. 'Where're your tears? Eh? You're more dead than she is. You can't even cry. And now what? You want me to stop? It hasn't even been a day yet, and you're what? Bored with it? Not the center of the universe anymore? You want everything to go back to the way it was, like that.' Clara snapped her fingers in his face. 'You disgust me.

I suppose I could blame Jane's death for my poor behavior, but as you'll discover, I'm just like this. I have no talent for choosing my battles. Life seems, strangely, like a battle to me. The whole thing.

loss like this was a progression of miseries, like stepping-stones. Until they reached the other side. The new continent. Where the terrible reality lived, and the sun never fully came out again.

I'm sorry, but I have bad news. Your aunt was found dead today.' 'Oh, no,' she responded, with all the emotion one greets a stain on an old T-shirt.

And he remembered hugging Sonny to him a few months later when the vet came to put him to sleep. And he remembered saying soothing things into the stinky old ears and looking into the weepy brown eyes as they closed, with one final soft thump of the ragged, beloved, tail. And as he felt the final beat of Sonny's heart Gamache had had the impression it wasn't that his old heart had stopped but that Sonny had finally given it all away.

But Clara knew why she wept. Not for Julia, not for Mrs. Morrow. She wept for all the Morrows, but mostly for parents who gave gifts and wrote "from." For parents who never lost children because they never had them.

But the woman he knew and loved had been swallowed up. Like Jonah. Her white whale of sorrow and loss in an ocean of body fluid.

Al's mouth formed the beginning of a word. Why, perhaps. Or, what. But it died there. And Gamache saw Laurent's father pack up his home, take all his possessions, and move. To that other world. Where nine-year-old boys were killed. A world where nine-year-old boys were murdered. Armand Gamache was the moving man, the ferryman, who took him there. And once across there was no going back.

But she could no longer say she believed in God and act otherwise. She did believe in God. And she believed that Jane was with him. And suddenly her pain and grief became human and natural. And survivable. She had a place to put it, a place where Jane was with God.

you don't get to be old without knowing grief. And loss.