In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all.
My uncle was a clown for the Ringling Brothers Circus, and when he died, all of his friends went to the funeral in one car.
Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries of human life, an initiation more searching and profound than even happy love.
Not that Mrs. Marston did not feel it [when her husband died]. She did, as deeply as her nature could. But she felt it as a well-padded boy feels a whacking, through layers of convention.
For grief has darkened my eyes; my body is like a shadow. . . . My days fade like an echo; the strings of my heart have snapped.
I pulled a dirty black sweatshirt from the laundry basket on his floor and tried to drink in his scent, to savor the essence of my sweet boy. . . . I inhaled it long and hard, wanting to permanently implant all of him in my brain, to make him last forever.
When all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.
What she did not know, and would never have believed, was that though her soul seemed to have been grown over with an impenetrable layer of mold, some delicate blades of grass, young and tender, were already pushing their way upwards, destined to take root and send out living shoots so effectively that her all-consuming grief would soon be lost and forgotten. The wound was healing from inside.
What was so terrible about grief was not grief itself, but that one got over it.
Part of getting over it is knowing you will never get over it.
The deaths of others carry us off bit by bit, until there will be nothing left; and this, too, will be, in a way, a mercy.
Don’t let Krusty’s death get you down, boy. People die all the time, just like that. Why, you could wake up dead tomorrow! Well, goodnight.
I’m always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I’m listening to it.
The more loss we feel, the more grateful we should be for whatever it was we had to lose. It means that we had something worth grieving for. The ones I’m sorry for are the ones that go through life not knowing what grief is.
Nights of anguish. Inconsolable sisters, why did I not kneel more to greet you, lose myself more in your loosened hair?
The more you cut the branches of a tree, the higher and stronger it grows. The more you put the gold in the fire, the purer it becomes. The more you sharpen the steel by grinding, the better it cuts. . . . Therefore I am happy that you have had great tribulations and difficulties. . . . Strange it is that I love you and still I am happy that you have sorrows.
To hurry pain is to leave a classroom still in session. To prolong pain is to remain in a vacated classroom and miss the next lesson.
I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing.
When our wounds cease to be a source of shame and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers. . . . Our own experience with loneliness, depression, and fear can become a gift. . . . Our own bandaged wounds will allow us to listen to others with our whole beings.
Once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.
