#grief

I basked in you; I loved you, helplessly, with a boundless tongue-tied love. And death doesn't prevent me from loving you. Besides, in my opinion you aren't dead. (I know dead people, and you are not dead.) ↗

— Franz Wright

#grief #love #death

Holding the knife with the blade against my palm, it became so clear how my life would only contain shadows now. Shadows of things gone; not just the people themselves but everything connected to them. Was this my future? Every moment, every tiny thing I saw and did and touched, weighted by loss. Every space in this house and my town and the world in general, empty in a way that could never be filled. ↗

— Jennifer Castle

#grief #loss #mourning #tragic-death #death

Once very near the end I said, 'If you can -- if it is allowed -- come to me when I too am on my death bed.' 'Allowed!' she said. 'Heaven would have a job to hold me; and as for Hell, I'd break it into bits. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#grief #heaven #hell #love #death

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

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

As I walk through the redwood trees, my sneakers sopping up days of rain, I wonder why bereaved people even bother with mourning clothes, when grief itself provides such an unmistakable wardrobe. ↗

— Jandy Nelson

#death-of-a-loved-one #grief #love #death

And then Jonah heard God’s voice. “Jonah, do you know what the difference is between you and the trees?” He was confident it was God because God usually asked questions but gave no answers. Jonah didn’t need a divine answer to this question, he knew it. “Yes,” he said. “The difference between me and the trees is that the trees let go of their leaves. I keep holding onto mine. The trees make room for new life. I don’t. ↗

— David W. Jones

#death #death-of-a-loved-one #god-s-grace #grief #letting-go

They should make earplugs for people who are grieving, so we don't have to hear the stupid things people say, but I'd look like a dork in them." -Corinna ↗

— Carole Geithner

#children-s-grief #death-of-a-loved-one #death-of-a-parent #grief #if-only