I needed, I decided, to really know her, because I needed more to remember. Before I could begin the shameful process of forgetting the how and the why of her living and dying, I needed...

Who but my mother held those small pieces of my childhood? Where would they go when she was gone?

A four-year-old has so little past, and he remembers almost none of it, neither the father he once had nor the house where he once lived. But he can feel the absences – and feel...

The closest thing I have to a spiritual experience anymore is a Mocha Frappe from McDonald’s.

Sarah, though, was still sometimes ruled by stark pain, lost to everything else. Grief slipped away, only to attack from behind. It changed shape endlessly. It lacerated her, numbed her, stalked her, startled her, caught...

…nothing remained but loneliness and grief…

Many people think that crying is a sign of weakness, they’re wrong – it is a sign of healing.

You can not die of grief, though it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is...

116. “I have heard that on the day the world was born,the bird of love was released to fly.It searched all the three worldsbut could not find a fit resting place.So it turned and entered...

being all there” when out in social situations, the pall that covers everything, like a cloak of sadness that never lifts.

I finally understood that no matter what I did, or who I found, I—he—none of us—would ever be able to win over the memories she had of Dad, memories that soothed her even while they...

If suddenly you do not exist,if suddenly you no longer live,I shall live on.I do not dare,I do not dare to write it,if you die.I shall live on.For where a man has no voice,there, my...

The Women in Black are Israeli Jews who meet wall in Jerusalem. They meet every Friday, the Sabbath evening, and pray. They begin by singing Kaddish for all the Israelis killed in the fighting in...

Grief comes and goes, but depression is unremitting.

You’ve been wondering lately when the moment is that somebody is truly lost to you.

My pain builds like storm clouds―massive, dark, and heavy with teardrops. Moisture falls torrential as if my world is a violent, eternal downpour; however, at long last the source runs dry and the bitter storm...

What I’ve always taken away from his words is the sense that we all have something that confines us, that seeks to define us, label us, belittling us in the process, shortchanging our potential. Can...

The captain’s eyes betrayed what his countenance must conceal: the anguish of an ancient being who must honour his birthright by living beyond those whom he would have given much to keep.

Because I knew so much about him, because I had been close to him, I couldn’t bring the various fragments of my experience with him into a single coherent image. The truth was mobile and...

What made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting. Forgetting small things first… it’s amazing how much you could forget, and everything you forgot made that person less alive inside you until...

Which would you choose if you could:pleasure for yourself despite your friendsor a share in their grief?

Love is an engraved invitation to grief.

Psychologists have clinically observed that overly prolonged grief in the bereaved usually signifies a poor relationship with the one who died.

I didn’t create them, humans created the Pollution. Cheryl Nobel, Alecto Steele, Albert Sanders, Olivia Campbell, all my pretty little Representations, there aren’t many of them left these days but they’re still very dangerous! They’re...

To be afraid of sorrow is to be afraid of joy also.

I looked at the woman crying over the doll and felt something else. I was sick of people acting against their own interests. Mooing about how to refinance the slaughterhouse. Putting skylights in the killing...

An ElegyA thousand times must we deploreThe lost will never come to life again;Even as flowing water runs away,Returning nevermore.Lady Kanin

But when I do feel all the strength go out of me, and I fall to my knees beside the table and I think I cry, then, or at least I want to, and everything...

I am with the American people. I share their pain. I share their grief, whether he was involved or not.

We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accept it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for. Of course it is...

I wished that my own bones were unbound, I wished they were mingling, picked clean by fish, with the bones of another body, a body my bones and heart and soul had loved with unfathomable...

If you try to hold people to your standard of conduct you will go mad with disappointment and grief.

When love dies, the heart’s ashes do not leave on the wind—they rest on the mantelpiece of the soul, darkening the sunrise we once saw to be beautiful.

She felt that at some point she must finally and formally talk to Louisa about Hubert, and ask her to acknowledge that the worst possible thing had happened to her as well.

I ultimately decided to hold my tongue and settle instead for the comfort of ignorance. Not knowing the truth, I retained hope, and that hope I held like a smooth warm stone against my heart.

Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion...

The first rose on my rose-tree Budded, bloomed, and shattered, During sad days when to me Nothing mattered. Grief of grief has drained me clean; Still it seems a pity No one saw,—it must have...

Somewhere out in the darkness, a phoenix was singing in a way Harry had never heard before: a stricken lament of terrible beauty. And Harry felt, as he had felt about phoenix song before, that...

I took his razor from the shower floor, bits of his black hair still caked between the blades. I took his toothbrush from the sink counter and sucked on the bristles, trying to find the...

Dysphagia is the medical term for not being able to swallow, and I know that there are two kinds of dysphagia: oropharyngeal and esophageal. But maybe there is also a third kind of dysphagia that...

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...

Pitiful and pitied by no one, why have I come to the ignominy of this detestable old age, who was ruler of two kingdoms, mother of two kings? My guts are torn from me, my...

…grief can derange even the strongest and most disciplined of minds.

We never truly “get over” a loss, but we can move forward and evolve from it.

It will be better to spent our energy on reality; the tangible facts, not thoughts of the past.

My sister will die over and over again for the rest of my life. Grief is forever. It doesn’t go away; it becomes a part of you, step for step, breath for breath. I will...

Families that feel together, heal together.

Memories begin to creep forward from hidden corners of your mind. Passing disappointments. Lost chances and lost causes. Heartbreaks and pain and desolate, horrible loneliness. Sorrows you thought long forgotten mingle with still-fresh wounds.

But sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping; and when the waves washed back, I found myself looking out over a brackish wreck which was illumined in a light so...

So I let her go, too. And I’m sorry. I know you loved her. It was hard not to.Takumi