… being with people who don’t understand is worse than being alone with her grief.

Why can’t I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.

MOTHER – By Ted KooserMid April already, and the wild plumsbloom at the roadside, a lacy whiteagainst the exuberant, jubilant greenof new grass and the dusty, fading black of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet,only...

…People are not one-dimensional. People do not live on one plane…

Part of dealing with the sense of being cut off – for both the one dying and the one bereaved – is acknowledging that though a vital part of life has changed dramatically, all relationships...

What if you wake up one fine morning only to realize that the life you have been living since the last few days was nothing but a dream of yours?Would you go back to sleep...

I was ravenous for my child and took to gorging myself in the boneyard, hoping that she might possibly meet me halfway, or just beyond, one night, if only for an instant—step back into her...

I’m sure that they’ll be able to realize how wrong it all is… even though the idiots outnumber most people these days, there are still enough intelligent people to fight against it.

If you’ve been hurt and you’ve grieved and you’ve been through the mill, it takes a long time to get over it.

There is a difference between saying goodbye and letting go. Goodbye is not permanent. You can meet years later as old friends and share what happened in your life. You can smile and laugh about...

His face looked almost as gray as his suit, and the pouches beneath his eyes looked like little bags for holding all the sadness that his head couldn’t hold.

I was angry with him before. I’m not really sure why. Maybe I was just angry that the world had become such a complicated place, that I have never known even a fraction of the...

And in it all, the sensation of shaking my fists at the sky, shaking my fists high up to the sky, because that is what we do when someone dies too early, too beautiful, too...

I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, hoever, turns out to be not a state but a process.

I try to remember everything, every thing, but sometimes I forget something. I don’t even know what it is sometimes, but I know it’s not coming to me, something about him isn’t coming to me...

Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance.

I stood there feeling the lightness of my bones, knowing now this was not only lack of sleep that had transformed my bones into feathers, but my body’s recognition that soon I would be leaving...

It’s different when the person you love dies. There’s an awful finality to death. But it is final. The end. And there’s the funeral, family gatherings, grieving, all of those necessary rituals. And they help,...

Sam was your brother, and Trick was your friend, but what they did had nothing to do with you. You don’t have to choose. Just because me and your dad couldn’t live together, didn’t mean...

Sooner or later, all talk among foreigners in Pyongyang turns to one imponderable subject. Do the locals really believe what they are told, and do they truly revere Fat Man and Little Boy? I have...

When someone you love…when they die, you want it undone. You’d do anything to have them back, and it’s easy to believe that if only this had happened or that had happened, everything would be...

The weird, weird thing about devastating loss is that life actually goes on. When you’re faced with a tragedy, a loss so huge that you have no idea how you can live through it, somehow,...

Grief is a hone to a hard mind.

…and they limp and halt, they’re all wrinkled, drawn, they squint to the side, can’t look you in the eyes, and always bent on duty, trudging after Ruin, maddening, blinding Ruin. But Ruin is strong...

That first shrink I saw when I got back to Clayton Falls told me no one is a lost cause, but I think that’s bullshit. I think people can be so crushed, so broken, that...

I didn’t cry. Real things don’t make me cry. Only false or sentimental things can do that. In this respect I’m like most civilised humans.

She needed to recover. His father had died in January; it was only the end of May. They needed to stick to the routine they’d established during the intervening months. in that way, their life...

The only way past the pain is through it. Pain, grief, anger, misery…they don’t go away–they just increase and compound and get worse. You have to live through them, acknowledge them. You have to give...

She had not had the relief of amnesia. She had suffered longer, and she had suffered more. Each second was agony in the first weeks. She was like an amputee in the days before anesthesia,...

You don’t have to tell me you’re fine. I’m not fine. You’re not fine either. We can be honest with each other about that, can’t we?’ I say. The sides of her face tense as...

Somehow, grief had seemed easier to bear when the skies were dark and a cold wind kept cats and prey inside their nests.

Grief does not change you. It reveals you.

How many times can a heart be shattered and still be pieced back together? How many times before the damage is irreparable?

Only fake tears last forever.

Nix still held Benny’s hand, and her grip tightened to an almost crushing force, grinding his hand bones together. It hurt, but Benny would rather have cut that hand off than take it back at...

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...

I felt bad for trying to live a happy, full life, while my heart was buried in a dead man’s chest.

There’s always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you’d never stop grieving.

Not every loss was confirmed by an officer at the door. Nor a telegram with the power to sink a fleet. Loss, often the worst kind, also arrived through the deafening quiet of an absence.

How could she trust this man, so imprecise with his words, to take care of the burial? To say there had been a loss was ludicrous; one lost a shoe or a pair of keys....

According to Melanie Klein, we develop moral responses in reaction to questions of survivability. My wager is that Klein is right about that, even as she thwarts her own insight by insisting that it is...

But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love...

Just remember, what the French say. No, probably not the French, they’ve got a president or something. The Brits, maybe, or the Swedes. You know what I mean?””No, Matthew. What do they say?””The king is...

After he died, there was a deep calm to his face; he seemed a kind of unfathomable, still well which opened on and down beneath the suddenly smooth surface of his skin…The heat in him...

The memory of the pain did not destroy the reality of the pleasure; grief did not obliterate joy.

It is poor solace to speak of the passing of time and grief,” the master said. His quiet voice had gone somehow bleak, though Araene could not decide where in his unchanging tone the difference...

The kindness sent from one compassionate soul to another during the time of loss of one held so dear allows the sorrow-filled heart to open wide, filling the space of emptiness that grief may have...

We don’t forget, but something vacant settles in us.

In the end I didn’t know who I was crying for, but it was something my body wanted to do, as though trying to digest grief.

Come up into the hills, O my young love. Return! O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again, as first I knew you in the timeless valley, where we shall feel ourselves...