There was a super-8 steel town somewhere, where all the forgotten things in the cruel world ended up eventually, Mandy was sure of it… this place, she decided, was called Smog City.

Jack had been the love of her life and he was gone. It seemed now that there had never been bad times, though she knew that wasn’t true.

When a woman miscarries, the experience of the father is often forgotten. But men grieve pregnancy loss too…

Perhaps … To R.A.L.Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,And I shall see that still the skies are blue,And feel one more I do not live in vain,Although bereft of you.Perhaps the golden meadows...

Grief is an artist of powers as various as the instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb...

The look on his face told her what had happened and that hurt burrowed deeper than anything she’d ever felt, deep enough to change from the thing she felt to the thing she was. Love,...

The digging continues … Ground Zero it looks more and more like a construction site. Too much of the horror is gone. No fire. No smoke … What was war becomes peace, becomes peaceful. But...

Four years after my father’s death, when the subject of parents came up in conversation i would relate the information in a flat, matter-of-fact tone eager to detect in my listener the flinch of grief...

And then it was, that grief and pain made themselves known to me as never before. Note this, because I knew the full absurdity of Fate and Fortune and Nature more truly than a human...

It was the first time in years I didn’t wonder if my father was out there, looking at it too.

He had pulled out of that grief, eventually – out from under the suffocating weight of it. Suffering had formed him: made him silent and deliberate, thoughtful: deep.

We lose the understanding that death always begets life of some sort, and that life is always an opportunist, persistently standing ready to build something out of the smoldering ashes and raise something up out...

Grief lasts longer than sympathy, which is one of the tragedies of the grieving.

Grief, it seemed, drove Voldemort out…though Dumbledore, of course, would have said that it was love.

Except for my daughters, I have not grieved for any death as I have grieved for his. His was a great and beautiful spirit, he was a man – all man, from his crown to...

People think that food cheers you up, that a doughnut cures all ills, but this only works for trivial complaints. When real disaster strikes, food chokes you.

It’s funny how sometimes you don’t see the obvious things coming. You think you know what life has in store for you. You think you’re prepared. You think you can handle it. And then-boom, like...

The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow.

Eustasia Johannsen was ready. Anyone could see that. Everything about her ancient self gave evidence to it: Her skin, wrinkled and transparent… But mainly, it was her eyes. They were drawn into her face as...

Journeying through grief is one of the most “normal human” experiences you can have. Nevertheless, all too frequently the heartbroken seem to feel alienated by society. Unfortunately in our culture, we are taught to hold...

The portrait of his past was partially erased by God and he is searching for those erased portions.

There are people everywhere standing in line at the movies, buying curtains, walking dogs, while inside, their hearts are ripping to shreds.

For darkness terrifies. It swallows you, warps you, nullifies you. Who alive can possibly profess confidence in darkness? In the dark, you can’t see.

She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it.

It began with the Christmas tree lights. They were candy-bright, mouth-size. She wanted to feel the lightness of them on her tongue, the spark on her tastebuds. Without him life was so dark, and all...

Will my eyes adjust to this darkness? Will I find you in the dark – not in the streaks of light which remain, but in the darkness? Has anyone ever found you there? Did they...

You are alone”Rose colored memories drown,taking their last breath.

We formed an impromptu circle just so we could look at each other and memorize faces. We hardly noticed the waiting officials. We hardly noticed anything but our little family whose ties weren’t loosening at...

I went to a tattoo parlor and had YES written onto the palm of my left hand, and NO onto my right palm, what can I say, it hasn’t made my life wonderful, its made...

‘Nothing can make death easier,’ Cala said, ‘but silence can make it harder.’ ‘Speaking helps not,’ Maia said.

Everything that falls upon the eye is an apparition, a sheet dropped over the world’s true workings. The nerves & brain are tricked, and one is left with dreams that these specters loose their hands...

Happy Endings are an illusion. Real life is filled with brief moments of fleeting happiness, but ultimately every life is a tragedy that ends in death and grief.

Like many people whose lives had formed around a particularly painful incident, she had grown used to providing ellipses around the event of her brother’s death to keep conversations comfortable. At some point the subconscious...

It was Jeremy at the door. He recognized something in Jacob. Jeremyis a cancer survivor.

Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart.

So that’s it. That’s the big secret. I tried to kill myself on New Year’s eve. Just like Sadie did last night. Only she really did it. I don’t know all the detatils, just the...

Heart weeps.Head tries to help heart.Head tells heart how it is, again:You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But even the earth will go, someday.Heart feels better, then.But the words of...

…all winter the acorns and red Maple leaf moldered in silence – in the same way grief is gnawing at me – slowly, imperceptibly… consuming…

Even extreme grief may ultimately ventitself in violence–but more generally takes the form of apathy

What Karen wants to do – needs to do – is cry, but she can’t. Here, alone, when she could howl, beat the sofa cushions, scream; now, somehow, she is unable. It’s for fear that...

Even in death, her mother was winning.

When someone you love dies, you get a big bowl of sadness put down in front of you, steaming hot. You can start eating now, or you can let it cool and eat it bit...

Many people tried comforting us with words. But there are no consoling words! I really just wanted people to be quiet. I appreciated those who cried with me, hugged me, and offered a brief prayer,...

Sorrow spoken lends a little courage to the speaker.

Sometimes she’d go a whole day without thinking of him or missing him. Why not? She had quite a full life, and really, he’d often been hard to deal with and hard to live with....

The moonlight rained down on the beach as if to shine a spotlight on my solitude, and I wanted to cry out at it, ‘Why did you take her? You, surrounded by all of your...

He looked very old. He looked, James thought, getting his head now against the Lighthouse, now against the waste of waters running away into the open, like some old stone lying on the sand; he...

A selfish person can still love someone else, can’t they? Even when they’ve hurt them and let them down.

There is a realm in which miracles are possible and do take place. The door to this realm is the belief in all possibilities and YOU are the key.

My grief lies all within; and these external manner of laments are merely shadows of the unseen grief that swells with silence in the tortur’d soul.