Quotes About Loss

I missed him, she said finally. I put my hand over hers and sat down, pulling my chair closer. I know, I said softly. You came back from Florida feeling really good, and then you find out he's such a rat bastard that he— No, she said distractedly, interrupting me. I missed him. All those Ensures, and not a one made contact. I have terrible aim. And then she sighed. Even just one would have made it better. Somehow.

The dead aren't the only ones who vanish: you, too, can disappear in plain sight if enough is taken from you. I was still missing, in many ways. And I wasn't sure I wanted to be found.

And while it is hard enough to take away something that makes a person happy it's even more difficult when it seems like it's the only thing.

I jammed my hand in my jacket pocket, bracing myself fo the next hit, and fel something. Something grainy and samll, sticking to the tips of my fingers: the sand from Commons Park. Oh Cass, I thought. I miss you so, so much.

All we had was her room, her stories, and the quiet that settled in as we tried in vain to spread ourselves out and fill the space she'd left behind.

It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again. It was what you couldn't see, those tiniest of pieces, that were lost in the severing, and their absence kept everything from being complete.

It was such a weird thing how a breakup stretched much wider than you expected. You didn't just lose a person, but their entire world as well.

Sometimes really, really bad things happen to people, and there is no explanation and no reason whatsoever.

I planned my whole future around Adam, she said now, quietly. And now I have nothing. No, I told her, now you just don't have Adam. There's a big difference, Lissa. You just can't see it yet.

Like no longer having something could be a good thing, and the proof of it as well. I was used to the opposite, when absence equaled heartbreak.

I felt something catch in my throat, a sudden surge of sadness that caught me unaware, almost taking my breath away. That was the thing. You never got used to it, the idea of something being gone. Just when you think it's reconciled, accepted, someone points it out to you and it just hits you all over again, that shocking.

I planned my whole future around Adam,' she said now, quietly. 'And now I have nothing.' 'No,' I told her, 'now you just don't have Adam. There's a big difference, Lissa. You just can't see it yet.

It was the best kind of love story . . . until there was an ending to it.

Then I'd crawl back into bed, smelling her all around me, and tell myself that next time, I would lock that window. But I never did.

Isn't it weird? The way you remember things when it's gone.

It felt so weird, to be on the other side, where you were the one expected to offer condolences, not receive them. I wanted my sorry to sound genuine, because it was. That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted to say.

Sometimes love can be an ugly thing.

When my dad died, it was like everything felt really shaky, you know? And trying to be the best I could be, it gave me something to focus on. If I could just do everything right, then I was safe.

Isn't it weird the way you remember things, when someone's gone?

You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends.

Like that box held the last little piece of what was normal, and I wasn't ready to give it up just yet.

But here in the present, my mother and I had no choice but to move ahead. We worked hard, me at school, her at outselling all the other builders. We parted our hair cleanly and stood up straight, greeting company — and the world — with the smiles we practiced in the quiet of our now-too-big dream house full of mirrors that showed the smiles back. But under it all, our grief remained. Sometimes she took more of it, sometimes I did. But always, it was there.

More than our old house, or our Wildflower Ridge place, the beach shack was my dad. I knew if he was haunting any place, it would be there, and for that reason I'd stayed away.

The dead aren't the only ones who vanish: you, too, can disappear in plain sight if enough is taken from you. I was still missing, in many ways. And I wasn't sure I wanted to be found.