#mourning

I drag the body out into the snowdrifts, as far away from our shack as I can muster. I put her in a thicket of trees, where the green seems to still have a voice in the branches, and try not to think about the beasts that’ll soon be gathering. There’s no way of burying her; the ground is a solid rock of ice beneath us. I kneel beside her and want desperately to weep. My throat tightens and my head aches. Everything hurts inside. But I have no way of releasing it. I’m locked up and hard as stone. “I’m sorry, Mamma,” I whisper to the shell in front of me. I take her hand. It could belong to a glass doll. There’s no life there anymore. So I gather rocks, one by one, and set them over her, trying my best to protect her from the birds, the beasts, keep her safe as much as I can now. I pile the dark stones gently on her stomach, her arms, and over her face, until she becomes one with the mountain. I stand and study my work, feeling like the rocks are on me instead, then I leave the body for the forest and ice. ↗

— Rachel A. Marks

#burry #cold #dead #dead-and-gone #death

LAVINIA: He made me feel for the first time in my life that everything about love could be sweet and natural... I have a right to love! ↗

— Eugene O'Neill

#mourning-becomes-electra #life

They which have no hope of a life to come, may extend their griefs for the loss of this, and equal the days of their mourning with the years of the life of man. ↗

— John Pearson

#days #equal #extend #griefs #hope

Let no one weep for me, or celebrate my funeral with mourning; for I still live, as I pass to and fro through the mouths of men. ↗

— Quintus Ennius

#celebrate #funeral #i #live #me

I do not mourn the loss of my sister because she will always be with me, in my heart," she says. "I am, however, rather annoyed that my Tara has left me to suffer you lot alone. I do not see as well without her. I do not hear as well without her. I do not feel as well without her. I would be better off without a hand or a leg than without my sister. Then at least she would be here to mock my appearance and claim to be the pretty one for a change. We have all lost our Tara, but I have lost a part of myself as well. ↗

— Erin Morgenstern

#mourning #sisters #change

You can't love your mother or father if you don't also have the capacity to grieve their deaths and, perhaps even more so, grieve parts of their lives. ↗

— Glenn Beck

#determination #enlightenment #father #grief #mother

I have lived with you and loved you, and now you are gone. Gone where I cannot follow, until I have finished all of my days. ↗

— Victoria Hanley

#grief #mourning #queen #death

Farewell is said by the living, in life, every day. It is said with love and friendship, with the affirmation that the memories are lasting if the flesh is not. ↗

— R.A. Salvatore

#death #mourning #death

Here is one of the worst things about having someone you love die: It happens again every single morning. ↗

— Anna Quindlen

#mourning #death

Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air. ↗

— Gail Caldwell

#cancer #death #friendship #grief #loss