Quotes About Loss

We do not think of it every day, but we never forget it: the beloved shall grow old, or ill, and be taken away finally. No matter how ferociously we fight, how tenderly we love, how bitterly we argue, how pervasively we berate the universe, how cunningly we hide, this is what shall happen.

I did not come into this world to be comforted. I came, like red bird, to sing. But I'm not red bird, with his head-mop of flame and the red triangle of his mouth full of tongue and whistles, but a woman whose love has vanished, who thinks now, too much, of roots and the dark places where everything is simply holding on.

Now of all voyagers I remember, who among them Did not board ship with grief among their maps?

What, precisely, will you grieve for? "For the river. For myself, my lost joyfulness. For the children who will not know what a river can be—a friend, acompanion, a hint of heaven.

I did not come into this world to be comforted. I came, like a red bird, to sing. But I'm not a red bird, with his head mop of flame and the red triangle of his mouth full of tongue and whistles, but a woman whose love has vanished, who thinks now, too much, of roots and the dark places where everything is simply holding on.

There was someone I loved who grew old and ill. One by one I watched the fires go out. There was nothing I could do except to remember that we receive then we give back.

FOR TOM SHAW S.S.J.E. (1945–2014) Where has this cold come from? "It comes from the death of your friend." Will I always, from now on, be this cold? "No, it will diminish. But always it will be with you." What is the reason for it? "Wasn't your friendship always as beautiful as a flame?

It is a silver morning like any other. I am at my desk. Then the phone rings, or someone raps at the door. I am deep in the machinery of my wits. Reluctantly I rise, I answer the phone or I open the door. And the thought which I had in hand, or almost in hand, is gone.

Has anyone seen meadowlark? I've been looking for probably forty years now unsuccessfully. He used to live in the field I crossed many a morning heading to the woods, truant again from school. There were no meadowlarks in the school. Which was a good enough reason for me not to want to be there. But now it's more serious. There is no field, neither have the woods survived. So, where is meadowlark? If anyone has seen him, please would you let me know posthaste?

Nature there will always be, but it will not be what we have now, much less the deeper fields and woodlands many of us remember from our childhood. The worlds of van Gogh and Turner and Winslow Homer, and Wordsworth too, and Frost and Jeffers and Whitman, are gone, and will not return. We can come to our senses yet, and rescue the world, but we will never return it to anything like its original form.

One's own dead are more than cadavers, they are place holders for the living. They are a focus, a receptacle, for emotions that no longer have one.

My mom was never a cadaver; no person ever is. You are a person and then you cease to be a person, and a cadaver takes your place. My mother was gone. The cadaver was her hull. Or that was how it seemed to me.

There is a sort of melancholy pleasure to be had out of a funeral, with its pomp and ceremony, but I shrank from a death-bed.

Others likened Diana to Jack Kennedy. Both had died too soon and too suddenly, cut down in their prime, to be remembered always as youthful and vibrant. One dear friend consoled me by saying, "Remember, Mary, she'll always be thirty-six, young and beautiful." Another close friend wrote, "We'll never know what she's been spared.

I agree with you, replied the stranger; we are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves -- such a friend ought to be -- do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures. I once had a friend, the most noble of human creatures, and am entitled, therefore, to judge respecting friendship. You have hope, and the world before you, and have no cause for despair. But I -- I have lost everything, and cannot begin life anew.

There was always scope for fear,so long as anything I love remained behind

Yet from whom has not that rude hand rent away some dear connexion; and why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel? The time at length arrives, when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished.

Alas! he is cold, he cannot answer me.

It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she, whom we say every day, and whose very existence appeared a part of our own, can have departed for ever—that the brightness of a beloved eye can be extinguished, and the sound of a voice heard.

It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she, whom we saw every day, and whose very existence appeared a part of our own, can have departed for ever.

when you speak of new ties and fresh affections, think you that any can replace those who are gone?

My dear Victor, do not speak thus. Heavy misfortunes have befallen us; but let us only cling closer to what remains, and transfer our love for those whom we have lost to those who yet live. Our circle will be small, but bound close by the ties of affection and mutual misfortune. And when time shall have softened your despair, new and dear objects of care will be born to replace those of whom we have been so cruelly deprived.

It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she, whom we saw every day, and whose very existence appeared a part of our own, can have been extinguished, and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard.

About half an hour afterwards he attempted again to speak, but was unable; he pressed my hand feebly, and his eyes closed for ever, while the irradiation of a gentle smile passed away from his lips.