It was one of those rare times when remembering the dead was more inmportant than tending to the needs of the living.

I love you every day. And now I will miss you every day.

What a thing to acknowledge in your heart! To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and...

Where did my friend go? Was there a place they all gathered, the lost and self destructive? Was there a room they put them in? Necks burnt with rope or holes in their skulls. Beach-water...

If something comes to life in others because of you, then you have made an approach to immortality.

Pain, unless it is physical, was sold to you (by your culture).

Deep down a broken heart, all the sadness one can bear is misery.

If, as a culture, we don’t bear witness to grief, the burden of loss is placed entirely upon the bereaved, while the rest of us avert our eyes and wait for those in mourning to...

…nobody was ever really ready to turn off their mother’s machine, no matter what they thought; to turn off the light of their childhood and walk away, just as if they were turning out a...

Not only had my brother disappeared, but–and bear with me here–a part of my very being had gone with him. Stories about us could, from them on, be told from only one perspective. Memories could...

As David Zucker watched the casket of his late wife being lowered into the ground, he thought the worst must surely be over and it was time to start the slow healing process to begin...

Will. For a moment her heart hesitated. She remembered when Will had died, her agony, the long nights alone, reaching across the bed every morning when she woke up, for years expecting to find him...

Mrs. Allan’s face was not the face of the girlbride whom the minister had brought to Avonlea five years before. It had lost some of its bloom and youthful curves, and there were fine, patient...

Your mom hates the world, I avoid it, and you try to save it.

It is finally about the quality of the conversations and silences we share, isn’t it? We become strangers when we have nothing to say to each other. We die to each other, when the conversations...

I should have known when I first saw that picture. For it is a very remarkable picture. It is the picture of a murderess painted by her victim-it is the picture of a girl watching...

The dead only knows their world.

There is a deep sense in which we are all ghost towns. We are all haunted by the memory of those we love, those with whom we feel we have unfinished business. While they may...

I’m still not able to sleep on her side of the bed” I faked a smile.

It hadn’t occurred to me that my mother would die. Until she was dying, the thought had never entered my mind. She was monolithic and insurmountable, the keeper of my life. She would grow old...

They say, the sun brings life to the world. The sun will rise and look is it not a corpse? Everything is dead and there are corpses everywhere. Just people and around them silence__that is...

Dry fingers of decaying branches protruded upward, above what was left of the canopy of green. They rattled like skeletal bones, grasping for a final breath from the last silvery clouds of evening that slowly...

But love is this really powerful thing that everyone’s got if they’d just learn how to accept it. I mean, come on. If it’s something we all have to give, and if it’s something we...

Death never pierces the heart so much as when it takes someone we love; cleaving the heart they held with their passing.

After the service was over, I whispered to one of my fellow staff members, “If I commit suicide, I’ll tattoo a message on my body. People will read the message on my body, if my...

But now the other half of “us” was gone and, lying there in my shadowy room, I’d be struck with this realization that I had no clue how to be just me again.

Grief, no matter how you try to cater to its wail, has a way of fading away.

Some people walk into our lives and leave footprints on our hearts. Others walk into our lives and we want to leave footprints on their face!

We are formed by dust, when life ends, we shall we return as dust to the ground.

He was dead.No trace of pain, no sufferings, no victimization.

Death descended like a theatrical storm over the Drakensberg Mountains, stranding me while it ran its course.

He Is Not DeadI cannot say, and I will not sayThat he is dead. He is just away.With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand,He has wandered into an unknown landAnd left us...

I guess we’ll never know exactly what … the reasons behind the losses we experience in this life. But being angry doesn’t make them any less devastating. It only robs us of the happiness and...

When he died, all things soft and beautiful and bright would be buried with him

People who fall in love can fall out of it.

When Death laughs, no one else does

I tried to imagine him capital-S Somewhere as we prayed, but even then I could not quite convince myself that he and I would be together again. I already knew too many dead people. I...

Death. It’s around more than people realize. Because no one wants to talk about it or hear about it. It’s too sad. Too painful. Too hard. The list of reasons is endless.

Mama wasn’t dead…exactly. They all said she was, but when Elma was small, she seen Mama creep into her room at night, half-naked, head all bloodied red like when they found her by the well...

Don’t be so hard on yourself, You’re doing the same thing, trying to reconcile all the moms that Mom ever was – The one you wanted, the one she was when you needed her and...

The greatest loss is the lost of life.

It’s not that people don’t know when they’ll die. It’s that they don’t seem to know they’ll die.

They should make earplugs for people who are grieving, so we don’t have to hear the stupid things people say, but I’d look like a dork in them.” -Corinna

lessen as time passes,” but it isn’t true. Sorrow and loss are constant, but if we all had to go through our whole lives carrying them the whole time, we wouldn’t be able to stand...

And a funeral, I found out, is like a wedding in reverse, with less time to plan.

When my husband died, people kept telling me not to cry. People kept trying to help me to forget. But I didn’t want to forget… So I realize, that if it’s hard for me, how...

His absence seemed a solid thing, a burden I must carry in addition to my grief… Yet I knew I would continue to live. Sometimes that knowledge seemed the worst part of my loss.

I could simply kill you now, get it over with, who would know the difference? I could easily kick you in, stove you under, for all those times, mean on gin, you rammed words into...

The departed souls shall never return.

They sat quietly together for a few minutes, Joe holding Fiona’s hand, Fiona sniffling. No flowery words, no platitudes passed between them. Joe would have done anything to ease her suffering, but he knew nothing...