#grief

…(my father) would say nothing, And I could not find a silence Among the one hundred Chinese silences That would fit the one he created Even though I was the one Who had just made up the business Of the one hundred Chinese silences- The Silence of the Night Boat. And the Silence of the Lotus, Cousin to the Silence of the Temple Bell Only deeper and softer… ↗

— Billy Collins

#loss #poetry #spirit #spirituality #business

words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#joy #limits #wonder #words #change

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 stop being sad, to let go, to move on, to cheer up. And if they don’t — if they have loved too deeply, if they do wake each morning thinking, I cannot continue to live — well, then we pathologize their pain; we call their suffering a disease. We do not help them: we tell them that they need to get help. ↗

— Cheryl Strayed

#grief #love #mother #death

... [They] took it upon themselves to start the laborious process of cranking up life again, after death has stopped us all in its tracks. ↗

— Diane Setterfield

#grief #quotes #death

My life is now divided into two periods: With June and After June. I can't wrap my mind around the idea of it. ↗

— Hannah Harrington

#loss #life

Three years? That's a thousand tomorrows, ma'am. ↗

— Karen Kingsbury

#bull-rider #cf #grief #horses #karen

When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part. ↗

— John Irving

#grief #loss #love

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love. ↗

— Washington Irving

#deep #eloquently #grief #love #mark

Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself. ↗

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

#does #end #great #grief #itself

The grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passionate rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island. ↗

— John Millington Synge

#contain #death #eighty #every #grief