#loss

Ever since the Christmas of '53, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection; the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving--Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home. ↗

— John Irving

#grief #loss #family

People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their own faces. I have noticed it on my face and I notice it now on others. The look is one of extreme vulnerability, nakedness, openness. It is the look of someone who walks from the ophthalmologist's office into the bright daylight with dilated eyes, or of someone who wears glasses and is suddenly made to take them off. These people who have lost someone look naked because they think themselves invisible. I myself felt invisible for a period of time, incorporeal. I seemed to have crossed one of those legendary rivers that divide the living from the dead, entered a place in which I could be seen only by those who were themselves recently bereaved. I understood for the first time the power in the image of the rivers, the Styx, the Lethe, the cloaked ferryman with his pole. I understood for the first time the meaning in the practice of suttee. Widows did not throw themselves on the burning raft out of grief. The burning raft was instead an accurate representation of the place to which their grief (not their families, not the community, not custom, their grief) had taken them. ↗

— Joan Didion

#loss-of-faith #faith

and it is hard to let go, to imagine alternatives, but you are bold with unknowing, you are ready to explore. ↗

— Terra Elan McVoy

#growth #loss #love #friendship

I am pleased to see that information campaigns, such as the America's WETLAND effort, are getting the message out, and people are beginning to realize that wetlands loss in Louisiana affects us all. ↗

— John Breaux

#am #america #beginning #campaigns #effort

I don't think when people sign up for a life of doing something they love to do they should have to sign up for a complete loss of privacy. I understand a little loss of privacy coming with the job. ↗

— Sarah Chalke

#complete #doing #i #job #life

Reckon it's best if you don't have anyone you care about; then it can't hurt you. Don't have to be afraid of losing someone if you no one to lose. ↗

— Karen Maitland

#hurt #loss #freedom

That what?" "That I knew i misjudged you. That you love him. I'm not saying In what way. Maybe you don't know yourself. But anyone paying attention could see how much you care about him," he says gently. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#friendship #grief #loss #friendship

God take what He would," she said. And He did, and He did, and He did and then gave her Halle who gave her freedom when it didn't mean a thing. ↗

— Toni Morrison

#common #freedom #god #loss #freedom

Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering. ↗

— Roland Barthes

#grief #loss #mourning #suffering #death

Time is such a waste of time to think about, because the longer you ponder it, the more of it you lose. And before you know it, you don’t know it, because you are nothing but dusty worm food. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#funny #humor #knowledge #loss #ponder