Quotes About Loss

It wasn't enough for Julia to be taken away from the family. All the good things about her had to be taken away, too.

She had felt this intense disembodiment for the last four days, really from the moment the Snake Man had told them to turn around. And then the police, the undertaker, asking if she wanted to see the body one last time and Claire blanching at the word body and sobbing like a child because she had spent every single second since they had taken Paul from her arms trying to remove the image of her lifeless, murdered husband from her mind.

the luxury vacations had come as a personal affront to a woman who had survived the Great Depression, a world war, the death of a husband, the loss of two children, and countless other hardships. Claire

My father is dead. My husband left me. The last few days have been the shittiest days I've had since you were shot and Mama died. I'm sorry I'm not happy and peppy for you, but my give-a-fuck is broken .

Being dead is a bit like being stupid, isn't it? Easy for you, but hard for the people around you.

Paul. She hadn't just watched him die. She had taken in his death like a hummingbird drawing nectar.

Lena had never understood people sending flowers to a funeral home, but she finally realized that the flowers were something for the living to enjoy, a reminder that there was still life in the world, that people could go on.

Claire took a stuttered breath. She couldn't stand the soft, reassuring tone of his voice. There was still an infinitesimal part of her that wanted her husband to somehow make it all better.

When your father died, I remember standing at his grave and thinking, This is the place where I can leave my grief. It wasn't immediately, of course, but I had somewhere to go, and every time I visited the cemetery, I felt like when I got back into my car, a tiny little bit of grief was gone.

It's good you have a grave to visit." Ginny stared out the window with a pleasant smile on her face. There was no telling where her mind was. "When your father died, I remember standing at his grave and thinking, This is the place where I can leave my grief.

That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, a mere training to act as a machine.

Marina, you took away all the words with you...

She had had affairs over the years ... but she had never been pregnant, never been a mother or a wife and it was only when she realized that it was too late, that it could never be, that she understood what it was that she had lost. Pamela's life would go on after she was dead, her descendants spreading through the world like the waters of a delta, but when Ursula died she would simply end. A stream that ran dry.

Choice, it seemed, was one of the first casualties of war.

How quickly life could dissolve into its more ugly elements.

but her mother's death had revealed that there was no metaphor too ostentatious for grief. It was a terrible thing and demanded embellishment.

Jennifer had never liked the pain of remembering what had happened, but for Theo it was the pain that kept Laura alive in his memory. He was afraid that if it ever began to heal she would disappear.

Mum had a Charles-and-Diana wedding mug that had survived longer than the marriage itself. Mum had worshipped Princess Di and frequently lamented her passing. Gone, she would say, shaking her head in disbelief. Just like that. All that exercise for nothing. Diana-worship was the nearest thing Mum had to a religion.

Because that was how it happened: one moment you were there, laughing, talking, breathing, and the next you were gone. Forever. And there wasn't even a shape left in the world where you'd been, neither the trace of a smile nor the whisper of a word. Just nothing.

That was how you lost people, a little carelessness and they just slipped through your fingers.

The more Viola forgot her mother, the more she missed her.

She had never chosen death over life before and as she was leaving she knew something had cracked and broken and the order of things had changed. Then the dark obliterated all thoughts.

How calm the house was. How deceptive that could be. One could lose everything in the blink of an eye, the slip of a foot. One must avoid dark thoughts at all costs, she said to Ursula.

but her mother's death had revealed that there was no metaphor too ostentatious for grief. It was a terrible thing and demanded embellishment.