#grief

The house is eerily quiet. All this time I thought silence would be a welcome reprieve, but it's less comforting than I imagined. The house feels so much bigger and colder than it ever has. ↗

— Hannah Harrington

#loneliness #loss #imagination

For a second, I feel a sense of overwhelming grief: for how things change, for the fact that we can never go back. I'm not certain of anything anymore. I don't know what will happen-- ↗

— Lauren Oliver

#grief #change

So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us—that's snatched right out of our hands—even if we are left completely changed people with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#death #emptiness #grief #loss #murakami

No point carrying useless ballast. It won't change a thing. ↗

— Joanne Harris

#hope #life #change

April 11, 2004 Does anyone know where I can find a copy of the rules of thought, feeling, and behavior in these circumstances? It seems like there should be a rule book somewhere that lays out everything exactly the way one should respond to a loss like this. I'd surely like to know if I'm doing it right. Am I whining enough or too much? Am I unseemly in my occasional moments of lightheartedness? At what date and I supposed to turn off the emotion and jump back on the treadmill of normalcy? Is there a specific number of days or decades that must pass before I can do something I enjoy without feeling I've betrayed my dearest love? And when, oh when, am I ever really going to believe this has happened? Next time you're in a bookstore, as if there's a rule book. 11:54 p.m. Jim ↗

— Jim Beaver

#inspirational #life #loss #dating

Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim. ↗

— Vicki Harrison

#grief #loss #love #strength #survival

They say, 'The coward dies many times'; so does the beloved. Didn't the eagle find a fresh liver to tear in Prometheus every time it dined? ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#grief #hurt #injury #love #suffering

I wish everyone would stop crying, Tom. Uncle Joe would be so angry about it." But she's crying herself now. "He'd be so angry at us, Tom, for crying so much when all he did was laugh. ↗

— Melina Marchetta

#grief #death

When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing. ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#death #grief #laughter #p- #death

Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back -- to be sucked back -- into it? ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#grief #grieving #loss #stillbirth #death