“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.”
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D. & David Kessler, On Grief & Grieving

“One of the grubby truths about a loss is that you don’t just mourn the dead person, you mourn the person you got to be when the lost one was alive. This loss might even be what affects you the most.”
Meghan O’Rourke, The Long Goodbye

“The gods may throw a dice,
Their minds as cold as ice.
And someone way down here,
Loses someone dear.
The winner takes it all,
The loser has to fall.”
ABBA, The Winner Takes It All

“But I love you so much that the sound
Of your voice can get me high
Thanks for taking me
On a one way trip to the sun
And thanks for turning me into a someone”
Ritchie Adams and Alan Bernstein, After The Lovin’ (as sung by
Engelbert Humperdinck)

“Well I tried to make it Sunday, but I got so damn depressed
That I set my sights on Monday and I got myself undressed”
America, Sister Golden Hair

“And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.”
Maya Angelou, When Great Trees Fall

“One day someone is going to hug you so tight that all of your broken pieces will stick back together.”
Anonymous

“Love is infinite. Grief can lead to love. Love can lead to grief. Grief is a love story told backward just as love is a grief story told backward.”
Bridget Asher

“I had always turned to books, to knowledge, to help me get through everything in my life—and, sometimes, to escape it. But grief was a journey through a forest of razor blades. I walked through every painful inch of it—no shortcuts and no anesthesia.”
Michele Bardsley, Don’t Talk Back To Your Vampire

“Dear Hope
If you can hear me, don’t go
I don’t feel you now but I know you’re there
Dear Hope
I could really use you now
Throw me a rope
Throw me a rope
Dear Hope
… … …
I can’t seem to shake it yet, feeling that
Things may never change
It always breaks my heart when broken parts
Ache to heal again”
Sara Bareilles, Dear Hope

“There is a feeling of disbelief that comes over you, that takes over, and you kind of go through the motions. You do what you’re supposed to do, but in fact you’re not there at all.”
Frederick Barthelme, Elroy Nights

“Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering.”
Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary, entry dated July 18, 1978

“We don’t forget, but something vacant settles in us.”
Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary, entry dated January 30, 1979

“Sometimes it’s your fragrance that comes to me, out of the blue, on a crowded road in a Sunday afternoon.
But more often, it’s memories of us that cross my mind almost every lone evening.
All I want is to lessen the pain I feel every night.
But every morning I wake up is another day, hopeless and miserable, with nothing but a deafening silence, a wave of tears, memories and your absence.”
Sanhita Baruah

“At midnight tears
Run in your ears.”
Louise Bogan, Solitary Observation Brought Back From a Sojourn in Hell in The Blue Estuaries

“I want you more than I need you
I need you so bad
Are you coming back?
Are you coming back?
I’m waiting
… …
Haven’t had a dream in a long time
Haven’t been able to sleep
Are you coming back? Are you coming back?
I’m waiting
I’m waiting.”
Alice Boman, Waiting

“So this was how it was to be, now: I would do my best to live in the quick world, but the ghosts of the dead would be ever at hand.”
Geraldine Brooks, March

“Absence has a presence.”
Dominique Browning, Around the House and in the Garden: A Memoir of Heartbreak, Healing, and Home Improvement

“So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.”
E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

“Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can’t even cry.”
Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

“Where there is great love there are always miracles.”
Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop

“Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.”
Pema Chodron

“No one can take your grief from you; it belongs to you and you alone.”
Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Princess

“They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite.”
Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

“Unfortunately, there is no expiration date on grief.”
Elizabeth Czukas

“Life Lesson 3: You can’t rush grief. It has its own timetable. All you can do is make sure there are lots of soft places around — beds, pillows, arms, laps.”
Patti Davis, Two Cats and the Woman They Own: or Lessons I Learned from My Cats

“I’ve got death inside me. It’s just a question of whether or not I can outlive it.”
Don DeLillo, White Noise

“Grieving doesn’t make you imperfect. It makes you human.”
Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever

“The bird is gone, and in what meadow does it now sing?”
Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

“If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.”
Emily Dickinson, If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking

“I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.”
Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

“You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave!”
The Eagles, Hotel California

“God, You know what I need.”
Lita Ebersole

“Most days I am shocked that time just keeps ticking by—no slower, no faster than before—I listen to the various clocks in the house and it amazes me that time hasn’t stopped completely. For some reason it seems like it should stop, at least for a little while, so the universe can pay its respects to the passing of our loved ones.”
Michael Ebersole

“We are expected to bear the unbearable and to survive the unsurvivable.”
Michael Ebersole

“She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.”
George Eliot, Middlemarch

“She lost much of her appetite. At night, an invisible hand kept shaking her awake every few hours. Grief was physiological, a disturbance of the blood. Sometimes a whole minute would pass in nameless dread – the bedside clock ticking, the blue moonlight coating the window like glue – before she’d remember the brutal fact that had caused it.”
Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot

“No, I can’t forget tomorrow
When I think of all my sorrow
When I had you there but then I let you go
And now it’s only fair that I should let you know
What you should know
I can’t live if living is without you
I can’t live, I can’t give anymore
Can’t live if living is without you
I can’t give, I can’t give anymore”
Tom Evans and Pete Ham, Without You (as sung by Harry Nilsson)

“It’s easy to be forgetful when you’re grieving, even forget those things that you believe most people wouldn’t.”
Liz Fichera, You Are Here

“Part of getting over it is knowing that you will never get over it.”
Anne Finger, Past Due

“I am a chronicler of absence.”
Carrie Fisher, Delusions of Grandma

“There’s a loneliness that only exists in one’s mind. The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I know this: there is no sense to grief. There is no pattern or shape or texture, and there are no books or stories which can lessen the pain at losing a person you have loved, and will always love. There are no rules, with loss.”
Susan Fletcher, The Silver Dark Sea

“There are as many sorrows as there are people who feel them and there are no rules…
… …
It is solitary… Grief is such a lonely thing. There is no-one in it with you – others may grieve for the same soul, but they do not grieve exactly for what you also grieve. No-one has lost precisely what you have lost. Not exactly, never exactly. We are in it alone…
… …
Oh it is wild and it is lonely. It is as if you’ve woken to a world that you recognise but it has been tilted, somehow – coated, or rubbed down, or made colder or less bright. It echoes where it should not echo; where it should echo, it is as echoless as a single, muffled thud. And grief is not merely sadness, as if sadness alone was not enough to bear. I had imagined the sorrow to be as deep as a well, a howling grief, but I had not imagined the other feelings that have no right to be there, which seem wholly misplaced in a state of grieving – rage, impatience, self-pity, disgust. They come from the dark and rush in upon you…”
Susan Fletcher, The Silver Dark Sea

“I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.”
Robert Frost, Birches

“In days that follow, I discover that anger is easier to handle than grief.”
Emily Giffin, Heart of the Matter

“Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.”
Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“I am ill because my mind is in a rut and refuses to leave.”
Karen Giordino

“We love because it’s the only true adventure.”
Nikki Giovanni, Love: Is a Human Condition

“My pain builds like storm clouds—massive, dark, and heavy with teardrops. Moisture falls torrential as if my world is a violent, eternal downpour; however, at long last the source runs dry and the bitter storm does cease. Blue skies dare to glow where the gloom has dissipated. I breathe it in, hoping to cleanse my inner soul. A laden heart tells me the truth; the clear sky is an illusion. Old pain rushes back like a flood, providing means for clouds to form and expand once again until it is too much to bear and the heaviness turns to rain. I cannot find refuge from this woe. It is my never-ending heartache.”
Richelle E. Goodrich, Making Wishes

“Sorrow on another’s face often looks like coldness, bitterness, resentment, unfriendliness, apathy, disdain, or disinterest when it is in truth purely sadness.”
Richelle E. Goodrich, Making Wishes

“Grief does not change you. It reveals you.”
John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“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, The Seer and the Sword

“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, Saving June

“Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.”
Vicki Harrison

“You think you’ve accepted that someone is out of your life, that you’ve grieved and it’s over, and then bam. One little thing, and you feel like you’ve lost that person all over again.”
Rachel Hawkins, Demonglass

“Though I knew in my mind that others had felt such loss, this loss was mine, and I felt that no one would ever understand it, and to try to explain the loneliness and pain I felt would be futile.”
Linda Hawley, Dreams Unleashed

“Someone dies, there oughta be something. It oughta shake the world! You’re not supposed to walk away!”
Lisa Henry, Sweetwater

“Grief wraps around people, takes them to a place they would not go otherwise.”
Patti Callahan Henry, Between The Tides

“A night of crying has silenced me. This morning it seems the whole world is against me. I’ve never before felt so barren, so empty. I’ve never before thought the daylight to be … my enemy. My enemy.”
Shaun Hick

“There is greater clarity in the still waters of sadness, something not found in the babbling brooks of more sought after emotions.”
Shaun Hick

“Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breathe
And to love you
All I need is the air that I breathe
Yes, to love you
… …
So sleep, silent angel
Go to sleep”
The Hollies, The Air That I Breathe

“I didn’t have a soul to throw my arms around.”
Son House, Death Letter Blues

“Great griefs exhaust. They discourage us with life. The man into whom they enter feels something taken from him. In youth, their visit is sad; later on, it is ominous.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“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, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“I will not forget you. I have written your name on the palms of my hands.”
Isaiah 49:15-16

“What’s even more messed up than funerals, is the way people treat you after the funeral. Like you’re diseased or something.”
Denise Jaden, Losing Faith

“Mrs. Sussex said Byron’s loss would grow more bearable. But here was the nub: he didn’t want to lose his loss. Loss was all he had left of his mother. If time healed the gap, it would be as if she’d never been there.”
Rachel Joyce, Perfect

“All you need is one safe anchor to keep you grounded when the rest of your life spins out of control.”
Katie Kacvinsky, Awaken

“Ten years, she’s dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more be gone than gravity or the moon.”
Mary Karr, Lit

“No matter how bad your heart is broken, the world doesn’t stop for your grief.”
Faraaz Kazi

“The most difficult aspect of moving on is accepting that the other person already did.”
Faraaz Kazi

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.”
John Keats, Endymion (Book I)

“We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world—the company of those who have known suffering.”
Helen Keller, We Bereaved Are Not Alone in Peace at Eventide

“You who have never “been there” in the throes of grief, have no idea what is going on inside the head of the grieving spouse: the scattered thoughts, the constant worry that we will forget something or someone in our fog-induced state, that strange feeling of not quite “being all there” when out in social situations, the pall that covers everything, like a cloak of sadness that never lifts.”
Mary Potter Kenyon, Refined By Fire: A Journey of Grief and Grace

“Still everyone, including the abbot, had said that he was running away from his grief. They’d had no idea what they were talking about. He’d cradled his grief, almost to the point of loving it. For so long he refused to give it up, because leaving it behind was like leaving her.”
Sue Monk Kidd, The Mermaid Chair

“Sometimes, there was no getting over it. Sometimes, you lived with the empty place inside of you until you imploded on it, loss as singularity, or until the empty place expanded and hollowed out the rest of you so thoroughly you became the walking dead, a ghost in your own life.”
Caitlin Kittredge, Bone Gods

“There are silences and silences. No one of them is like another. There is the silence of grief in velvet-draped rooms of a plushly carpeted funeral parlor which is far different from the bleak and terrible silence of grief in a widower’s lonely bedroom.”
Dean Koontz, Phantoms

“The depth of the feeling continued to surprise and threaten me, but each time it hit again and I bore it…I would discover that it hadn’t washed me away.”
Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

“When I married I opened myself to the possibility of great joy and great pain and I have known both. Hugh’s death is like an amputation. But would I be willing to protect myself by having rejected marriage? By having rejected love? No. I wouldn’t have missed a minute of it, not any of it.”
Madeleine L’Engle, Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage

“Death ends a life, not a relationship.”
Jack Lemmon in the movie, Tuesdays With Morrie

“I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process.”
C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“And grief still feels like fear. Perhaps, more strictly, like suspense. Or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen. It gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn’t seem worth starting anything. I can’t settle down. I yawn, fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness.”
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“When a relationship of love is disrupted, the relationship does not cease. The love continues; therefore, the relationship continues. The work of grief is to reconcile and redeem life to a different love relationship.”
W. Scott Lineberry

“When I saw your strand of hair I knew that grief is love turned into an eternal missing.”
Rosamund Lupton, Sister

“Sarah, though, was still sometimes ruled by stark pain, lost to everything else. Grief slipped away, only to attack from behind. It changed shape endlessly. It lacerated her, numbed her, stalked her, startled her, caught her by the throat. It deceived her eye with glimpses of Charles, her ear with the sound of his voice. She would turn and turn, expecting him, and find him gone. Again. Each time Sarah escaped her sorrow, forgetful amid other things, she lost him anew the instant she remembered he was gone.”
Kate Maloy, Every Last Cuckoo

“It seemed like a mistake. And mistakes ought to be rectified, only this one couldn’t be. Between the way things used to be and the way they were now was a void that couldn’t be crossed. I had to find an explanation other than the real one, which was that we were no more immune to misfortune than anybody else, and the idea that kept recurring to me…was that I had inadvertently walked through a door that I shouldn’t have gone through and couldn’t get back to the place I hadn’t meant to leave. Actually, it was other way round: I hadn’t gone anywhere and nothing was changed, so far as the roof over our heads was concerned, it was just that she was in the cemetery.”
William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“Grief lasts longer than sympathy, which is one of the tragedies of the grieving.”
Elizabeth McCracken, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir

“We do not move on from the dead people we love or the difficult situations we’ve lived through. We move forward, but we carry it all with us.”
Nora McInerny, The Hot Young Widows Club: Lessons on Survival from the Front Lines of Grief

“It’s odd, isn’t it? People die every day and the world goes on like nothing happened. But when it’s a person you love, you think everyone should stop and take notice. That they ought to cry and light candles and tell you that you’re not alone.”
Kristina McMorris, Letters From Home

“The whole world can become the enemy when you lose what you love.”
Kristina McMorris, Bridge of Scarlet Leaves

“If you suppress grief too much, it can well redouble.”
Moliere

“Do I want to be with you
As the years come and go?
Only forever
If you care to know
… … …
Do you think I’ll remember
How you looked when you smile?
Only forever
That’s puttin’ it mild”
James V. Monaco and Johnny Burke, Only Forever

“We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversations with people may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk.”
Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

“There’s Been A Hoot-Owl Howling By My Window Now
For Six Nights In A Row
She’s Coming For Me, I Know”
Michael Murphey and Larry Cansler, Wildfire

“In the end, everyone is aware of this:
nobody keeps any of what he has,
and life is only a borrowing of bones.”
Pablo Neruda, October Fullness

“Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air.”
Pablo Neruda, One Hundred Love Sonnets

“It occurred to me that grief is like a tunnel. You enter it without a choice because you must get to the other side. The darkness of it plays tricks on you and sometimes you can even forget where you are or what your purpose is. I believe that people, now and again, get lost or stuck in that tunnel…”
Loretta Nyhan, Empire Girls

“Every morning, I wake up and forget just for a second that it happened. But once my eyes open, it buries me like a landslide of sharp, sad rocks. Once my eyes open, I’m heavy, like there’s too much gravity on my heart.”
Sarah Ockler, Twenty Boy Summer

“Love is an engraved invitation to grief.”
Sunshine O’Donnell, Open Me

“One look from you I drift away
I pray that you are here to stay”
Roy Orbison, You Got It

“A house is no home unless it contain food and fire for the mind as well as for the body.”
Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Woman in the Nineteenth Century

“Here’s what I know: death abducts the dying, but grief steals from those left behind.”
Katherine Owen, Seeing Julia

“The weird, weird thing about devastating loss is that life actually goes on. When you’re faced with a tragedy, a loss so huge that you have no idea how you can live through it, somehow, the world keeps turning, the seconds keep ticking.”
James Patterson, Angel

“Getting up early these days I just can’t stay in bed
I make the coffee an old song runs ’round my head
Out on the back porch I’ve got a long day to get through
Gettin’ up early remembering you
Gettin’ up early remembering you”
Tom Paxton, Gettin’ Up Early

“For grief is felt not so much for the want of what we have never known, as for the loss of that to which we have been long accustomed.”
Pericles

“Sometimes when we are drowning in our own loss we lash out—anger is momentarily easier to cope with.”
Anne Perry, No Graves as Yet

“The tough times start,” he said, “the day the last casserole dish is returned.”
Michael Perry

“If it is possible to die of grief then why on earth can’t someone be healed by happiness?”
Jodi Picoult, Keeping Faith

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
Plato et al.

“I waited for dawn, but only because I had forgotten how hard mornings were. For a second I’d be normal. Then came the dim awareness of something off, out of place. Then the truth came crashing down and that was it for the rest of the day. Sunlight was reproof. Shouldn’t I feel better than I had in the dead of night.”
Francine Prose, Goldengrove

“My tears have been my food day and night.”
Psalm 42:3 NIV

“Grief is one illness that defies all remedies; it must ever run its course.”
Brandy Purdy, The Boleyn Bride

“You’re thankful for the kind things people say, you forgive the dumb things, but you’re crushed by the silence.”
Nora McInerny Purmort, It’s Okay to Laugh

“I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that’s real
… … …
Everyone I know goes away
In the end”
Michael Trent Reznor, Hurt (as sung by Johnny Cash)

“I aspire to be the widow my husband would be proud of….still.”
Mary Lee Robinson

“An observant friend will recognize the signs of the rise of grief: eyes that easily well with tears, a smile that is difficult to sustain, a tendency to withdraw. And ultimately, perhaps we each need to create our own symbol of grieving – to wear our version of black, or maybe to color with black crayons for a while.”
Sandy Oshiro Rosen, Bare: The Misplaced Art of Grieving and Dancing

“But when I do feel all the strength go out of me, and I fall to my knees beside the table and I think I cry, then, or at least I want to, and everything inside me screams for just one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more.”
Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“Tears have always been easier to shed than explain.”
Marty Rubin

“Every day heartaches grow a little stronger
I can’t stand this pain much longer
I walk in shadows searching for light
Cold and alone, no comfort in sight
… …
“What becomes of the broken-hearted
Who had love that’s now departed?”
Jimmy Ruffin, What Becomes of the Broken Hearted

“We are made of star stuff.”
Carl Sagan

“To weep is to make less the depth of grief.”
William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part 3

“Well, everyone can master a grief but he that has it.”
William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act 3 Scene 2

“It is useless for me to describe to you how terrible Violet, Klaus, and even Sunny felt in the time that followed. If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven’t, you cannot possibly imagine it.”
Lemony Snicket, The Bad Beginning

“Everyone grieves in different ways. For some, it could take longer or shorter. I do know it never disappears. An ember still smolders inside me. Most days, I don’t notice it, but, out of the blue, it’ll flare to life.”
Maria V. Snyder, Storm Glass

“I watch and listen, helpless to help. There is no point in saying “This, too, shall pass.” For a time we do not even want it to pass. We hold on to grief, fearing that its lifting will be the final betrayal.”
Ahdaf Soueif, The Map of Love

“It’s possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems, and that in time, the grief … lessens. It may not go away completely, but after a while it’s not so overwhelming.”
Nicholas Sparks, Dear John

“Youth offers the promise of happiness, but life offers the realities of grief.”
Nicholas Sparks, The Rescue

“Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
who told me time would ease me of my pain
I miss him in the weeping of the rain.
I want him at the shrinking of the tide.
The old snows melt from every mountain-side
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay

“And this evening when I close my eyes against the darkness and think about her, I’ll imagine iridescent wings fluttering, if only for a moment, against cloudless blue skies.”
Nancy Stephan, The Truth About Butterflies: A Memoir

“To better handle grief, become the passenger, not the driver.”
Todd Stocker, REFINED: Turning Pain into Purpose

“When those you love die, the best you can do is honor their spirit for as long as you live. You make a commitment that you’re going to take whatever lesson that person or animal was trying to teach you, and you make it true in your own life… it’s a positive way to keep their spirit alive in the world, by keeping it alive in yourself.”
Patrick Swayze, The Time of My Life

“My soul is a dark ploughed field
In the cold rain;
My soul is a broken field
Ploughed by pain.”
Sara Teasdale, The Broken Field

“It’s just no good anymore since you went away
Now I spend my time just making rhymes of yesterday”
Three Dog Night, One (Is The Loneliest Number)

“It may be a cat, a bird, a ferret, or a guinea pig, but the chances are high that when someone close to you dies, a pet will be there to pick up the slack. Pets devour the loneliness. They give us purpose, responsibility, a reason for getting up in the morning, and a reason to look to the future. They ground us, help us escape the grief, make us laugh, and take full advantage of our weakness by exploiting our furniture, our beds, and our refrigerator. We wouldn’t have it any other way. Pets are our seat belts on the emotional roller coaster of life–they can be trusted, they keep us safe, and they sure do smooth out the ride.”
Nick Trout, Tell Me Where It Hurts: A Day of Humor, Healing and Hope in My Life as an Animal Surgeon

“Whoever said that loss gets easier with time was a liar. Here’s what really happens: The spaces between the times you miss them grow longer. Then, when you do remember to miss them again, it’s still with a stabbing pain to the heart. And you have guilt. Guilt because it’s been too long since you missed them last.”
Kristin O’Donnell Tubb, The 13th Sign

“That was one of the worst things about losing your wife, I found: your wife is the very person you want to discuss it all with.”
Anne Tyler, The Beginner’s Goodbye

“Time Is
Too Slow for those who Wait,
Too Swift for those who Fear,
Too Long for those who Grieve,
Too Short for those who Rejoice;
But for those who Love,
Time is not.”
Henry Van Dyke, Time Is in Music and Other Poems

“There is a point when grief exceeds the human capacity to emote, and as a result one is strangely composed—”
Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“And perhaps there is a limit to the grieving that the human heart can do. As when one adds salt to a tumbler of water, there comes a point where simply no more will be absorbed.”
Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger

“I was tired of well-meaning folks, telling me it was time I got over being heartbroke. When somebody tells you that, a little bell ought to ding in your mind. Some people don’t know grief from garlic grits. There’s somethings a body ain’t meant to get over. No I’m not suggesting you wallow in sorrow, or let it drag on; no I am just saying it never really goes away. [It] is like having a pile of rocks dumped in your front yard. Every day you walk out and see them rocks. They’re sharp and ugly and heavy. You just learn to live around them the best way you can. Some people plant moss or ivy; some leave it be. Some folks take the rocks one by one, and build a wall.”
Michael Lee West, American Pie

“This hole in my heart is in the shape of you. No one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?”
Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“Monday, June 9: People think they know you. They think they know how you’re handling a situation. But the truth is no one knows. No one knows what happens after you leave them, when you’re lying in bed or sitting over your breakfast alone and all you want to do is cry or scream. They don’t know what’s going on inside your head–the mind-numbing cocktail of anger and sadness and guilt. This isn’t their fault. They just don’t know. And so they pretend and they say you’re doing great when you’re really not. And this makes everyone feel better. Everybody but you.”
William H. Woodwell, Jr.

“Grief is always sudden as winter, no matter how long the autumn.”
J. Aleksandr Wootton, Forgetting: impressions from the millennial borderland

“She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.”
William Wordsworth, A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal

“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, Walking to Martha’s Vineyard

“When things get really bad, you take comfort in the placeness of a place.”
Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake

Songs

“Estrellita” – Music & Love Song by Manual A. Ponce (1914). Note: This is sometimes called “My Little Star”, “Star of Love” & there is also a Hawaiian guitar solo arrangement by Zarh M. Bickford. Our sincere thanks to Mike’s lifelong friend JC for making us aware of it!

“I Don’t Want To Walk Without You” – Performed by Harry James & His Orchestra with Helen Forrest (1942)

“I’ll Fly Away” – Written by Albert E. Brumley (1929)

“I’ll Never Smile Again” – Words & Music by Ruth Lowe, performed by Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra featuring Frank Sinatra with The Pied Pipers (1940)

“I Need You” – Written by Gerry Beckley, performed by America (1972)

“I Will Remember You” – By Sarah McLachlan (1993)

“Waiting” – By Alice Boman (2013)