#gr

It was strange how in that moment of tragedy, it had seemed so unreal, like an old-fashioned movie reel playing on a screen for my eyes only. The pain and broken heart were blocked off for a little while, leaving me numb with disbelief. Shock is what Dad called it. But after a while, the cruel reality started to seep into my tissues, and my body became a sponge, just sucking it all up until, finally, there was so much grief inside, I couldn't help feeling it. That's how it happened for me. First, the numbness right after she died, next the agonising pain and then the place I was at now—the land of perpetual depression. ↗

— Karen Ann Hopkins

#depression #grief #numb #numbness #pain

Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#grammar #mortality #nouns #writing #death

If I could find one word that would shudder the air like that frightened sob, that wordless prayer of my newly-born, who drew one breath, and with unopened eyes sank back into death; If I could break the world's cold heart with that cry, then this grief would lift and I could die. ↗

— Kenneth L. Patton

#grief #loss #poetry #death

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good. ↗

— W.H. Auden

#grief #poetry #death

The difference between shallow happiness and a deep, sustaining joy is sorrow. Happiness lives where sorrow is not. When sorrow arrives, happiness dies. It can't stand pain. Joy, on the other hand, rises from sorrow and therefore can withstand all grief. Joy, by the grace of God, is the transfiguration of suffering into endurance, and of endurance into character, and of character into hope--and the hope that has become our joy does not (as happiness must for those who depend up on it) disappoint us. ↗

— Walter Wangerin Jr.

#grief #death

There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#going-postal #greed #life #money #philosophy-religion

One of the risks of appearing in public is the likelihood of being photographed. ↗

— Diane Arbus

#photography

Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead but about the ways in which the dead drag us along into their shadowy realm because we cannot let them go. So we follow them into the Underworld, descending, descending, until one day we turn and make our way back. ↗

— Meghan O'Rourke

#grief #loss #orpheus #death

I have seen many die, surrounded by loved ones, and their last words were ‘I love you.’ There were some who could no longer speak yet with their eyes and soft smile left behind that same healing message. I have been in rooms where those who were dying made it feel like sacred ground. (26) ↗

— Stephen Levine

#dying #healing #love #sacred-ground #death

Here the whole world (stars, water, air, And field, and forest, as they were Reflected in a single mind) Like cast off clothes was left behind In ashes, yet with hopes that she, Re-born from holy poverty, In lenten lands, hereafter may Resume them on her Easter Day." (Epitaph for Joy Gresham) ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#epitaph #hope #joy-gresham #loss #love