Quotes About Loss

I always thought of grief as a blow that took everything out of you. And it is like that. But it stays, past that first hard hit. It stays and blows its breath into you. It's always there, reminding you of what you've lost. What's gone.

And in the end blood and tears are alike because they stop too.

I heard how people sounded when their dreams were shattered, when their lives were turned into a waking nightmare.

I hurt all over even more now, like someone has shattered my insides, like I've been torn apart and put back together but I'm missing something. Her. And him. My brother.

She's gone, but I can be happy. I can be in love. I can be both those things and scared too, and I am. I am, and this is what life is.

I will always carry Mom in my heart. I will always miss her. I will always wish she was here.

History and speculation have placed Antinous at Hadrian's side as the one great attachment of the emperor's life, the loss of whom caused this mature, sophisticated and highly experienced ruler to allow himself to be subsumed by grief.

ANYONE WHO HAS EVER GRIEVED knows that grieving carries with it a tremendous wear and tear to the body itself, never mind the soul. Loss is an assault; a certain exhaustion, as strong as the pull of the moon on the tides, needs to be allowed for eventually.

Grief is such a—oh, it is such a solitary thing; this is the terror of it, I think. It is like sliding down the outside of a really long glass building while nobody sees you.

And I also understood: Grief is a private thing. God, is it a private thing.

Silly little plastic belt, made for a skinny pinny; it could barely tie around her. She managed, though - a tiny white bow. Waiting, she folded her hands and realized how every single time she went by this hospital, the same two thoughts occurred to her: that she'd been born here and that her father's body had been brought here after his suicide. She'd been through some things, but never mind. She straightened her back. Other people had been through things, too.

Bob was not a young man, and he knew about loss. He knew the quiet that arrived, the blinding force of panic, and he knew that each loss brought with it some odd, barely acknowledged sense of release. He was not an especially contemplative person, and he did not dwell on this. But by October there were many days when the swell of rightness, loose-limbedness, and gentle gravity came to him. It recalled to him being a child, when he found one day he could finally color within the lines.

Speaking of this, he felt something had been returned to him, as though the inestimable losses of life had been lifted like a boulder, and beneath he saw - under the attentive gaze of Daisy's blue eyes - the comforts and sweetness of what had once been.

This had often broken my heart, to realize that you never know the last time you pick up a child. Maybe you say "Oh, honey, you're getting too big to be picked up" or something like that. But then you never pick them up again.

life picked up speed, and then most of it was gone—made you breathless, really.

He knew the quiet that arrived, the blinding force of panic, and he knew too that each loss brought with it some odd, barely acknowledged sense of relief.

Angelina said, "Mom. I don't want you to die. That's the whole thing. You took from me the ability to care for you in your old age, and I wanted to be with you when you died, when you die. Mom. I wanted that.

I never wrote him. I never saw him again. He was just gone, this dear, dear man, this friend of my soul in the hospital so long ago, disappeared. This is a New York story too.

When word came that Keith had died of cancer, Abel was astonished. That astonishment had to do with death, with the wiping out of a person, with the puzzlement that the man was simply gone.

Women grieve, and men replace.

Here is what I did not know that morning in March: I did not know that I would never see my apartment again. I did not know that one of my friends and a family member would die of this virus. I did not know that my relationship with my daughters would change in ways I could never have anticipated. I did not know that my entire life would become something new.

Loss is an assault; a certain exhaustion, as strong as the pull of the moon on the tides, needs to be allowed for eventually.

When Chrissie left for college, then Becka the next year, I thought—and it's not an expression, I'm saying the truth—I did think I would die.

Olive glanced at him quickly. He was crying. She looked away, and from the corner of her eye, she saw him reach into his pocket, heard him blow his nose, a real honk. "My wife died in December," he said. Olive watched the river. "Then, you're in hell," she said. "Then, I'm in hell.