Why do people feel better when they blame someone? I don’t know. Maybe it just feels better to be angry than to be sad.

~ Kate Mcgahan

Kate Mcgahan Anger Bereavement Blame Feel Grief Guilt Loss Process Stage Strength

Father, be near as we are surrounded by this cloud of deep suffering. Open our eyes to see that you are all things, the light and the darkness, not only those things that seem good in our eyes, but the horrifying unexplainable. Wrap us up inside of the cloud and reveal the mysteries that can only be learned in places of sorrow, that when we walk out we will be as Moses, transformed by the shadow and beaming with the radiant light of your glory. Give us the strength to love on, though our hearts are broken.

~ Anna White

Anna White Bereavement Broken Heart Christianity Darkness Faith God Grief Loss Love Memoir Prayer Religion Shadow Strength Suffering

I have drunk the night and swallowed the stars. I am dancing with abandon and singing with rapture. There is not a thing I do not love. There is not a person I have not forgiven. I feel a universe of love. I feel a universe of light. Tonight, I am with old friends and we are returning home. The moon is our witness.

~ Kamand Kojouri

Kamand Kojouri Abandon Afterlife Bereavement Celebrate Celebration Dance Dancing Death Death Poems Deceased Departure Drunk Dying End Eternal Eternal Rest Eulogy Fate Forgive Forgiven Friends Funeral Harmony Heaven Home Kamand Kamand Kojouri Kojouri Life Light Living Love Moon Night Paradise Passing Rapture Rebirth Reborn Return Home Reunion Sing Singing Stars Swallowed Truth Union Unity Universe Witness

Looking at death can be life-affirming. It doesn’t need to mire us in thoughts of uselessness, nihilism, self-recrimination, and indifference to the future. Just a reminder that our days are numbered invites us to consider our blessings, strengthen our resolve to carry on, and escalate our compassion for all creatures, great and small.

~ Brent Green

Brent Green Aging Bereavement Death Future Loss Suffering

Give sorrow words, the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.

~ William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare Bereavement Grief Loss Mourning Sadness Sorrow Words

I felt like I was being carried over the threshold of a sisterhood of loss. I knew I was not walking alone, and that eventually I would bob back up to the surface of the deep, because the women around me showed me what healing looks like.

~ Anna White

Anna White Bereavement Depression Grief Healing Loss Miscarriage Recovery Sadness Sisterhood

Time is ungovernable, but grief presents us with a choice: what do we do with the savage energies of bereavement? What do we do with the memory - or in the memory - of the beloved? Some commemorate love with statuary, but behavior, too, is a memorial, as is a well-lived life. In death, there is always the promise of hope. The key is opening, rather than numbing, ourselves to pain. Above all, we must show our children how to celebrate existence in all its beauty, and how to get up after life has knocked us down, time and again. Half-dead, we stand. And together, we salute love. Because in the end, that's all that matters. How hard we loved, and how hard we tried.

~ Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Antonella Gambotto-Burke Bereavement Death Depression Grief Inspirational Loss Love Memory Mourning Suicide

The light in that room was a glow; I seem to remember the color green, or perhaps flowers. A pale green sheet covered his inert body but not his head, which lay (eyes closed, mouth set in a tense and terrible grimace) unmoving. Gianluca. Barely able to see, barely able to stand - my knees kept buckling – and breathing so quietly I thought that I, too, might die; that out of shock, I would just drift away, the shell of my body cracking open. No longer anchored by my brother’s love, I would be reabsorbed by sky. Gianluca. If there was never another sound in the world, I would understand – yes, that would be appropriate, it would be fitting. This was the antithesis of music, the antithesis of noise. My brother’s death seemed to demand silence of all the world. Gianluca.

~ Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Antonella Gambotto-Burke Asphyxiation Bereavement Depression Despair Gassing Grief Heartbreak Helium Suicide Identification Loss Morgue Mourning Sibling Loss Suicide Viewing

You shall find it greatly mitigates the sorrow of bereavements, if before bereavement you shall have learned to surrender every day all the things which are dearest to you into the keeping of your gracious God.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Charles Haddon Spurgeon Bereavement Faith Self Denial Surrender Trust

Forgiveness is a conscious choice to become more liberated and less constrained by the past. This simple act of changing one’s mindset can be the wellspring of tolerance, mercy, and compassion.

~ Brent Green

Brent Green Bereavement Death Forgiveness Grief Loss

Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.

~ Jalaluddin Rumi

Jalaluddin Rumi Bereavement Consolation Grief Loss Reincarnation

You never know what you have till you've lost it.

~ Alyson Noel

Alyson Noel Bereavement Loss Misattributed

You don't know who is important to you until you actually lose them.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi Bereavement Loss

Losing people you love affects you. It is buried inside of you and becomes this big, deep hole of ache. It doesn't magically go away, even when you stop officially mourning.

~ Carrie Jones

Carrie Jones Bereavement Loss Mourning

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

James Patterson Bereavement Grief Loss

There is an hour, a minute - you will remember it forever - when you know instinctively on the basis of the most inconsequential evidence, that something is wrong. You don't know - can't know - that it is the first of a series of wrongful events that will culminate in the utter devastation of your life as you have known it.

~ Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates Bereavement Grief Loss

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

Helen Keller Bereavement Grief Loss Suffering

It takes a year, nephew... a full turn of the calendar, to get over losing someone.

~ Annie Proulx

Annie Proulx Bereavement Grief Loss

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 andmy town and the world in general, empty in a way that could never be filled.

~ Jennifer Castle

Jennifer Castle Bereavement Grief Loss Mourning Tragic Death

All the sorrows of life are bearable if only we can convert them into a story.

~ Izak Dinesen

Izak Dinesen Bereavement Grief Loss

I felt great empathy for my friend, as one form of cancer after another emerged to challenge him. I felt sympathy for his suffering that surely clawed at his daily routines, always active and busy, but he rarely verbalized complaints while courageously challenging his archenemy. He met pain and physical decline with 600-calorie workouts; he discarded anxieties somewhere along innumerable running trails; he faced death by running through life at full stride.

~ Brent Green

Brent Green Aging Bereavement Cancer Grief Hospice Loss Suffering

Suffering creates a vivid contrast illuminating joy, happiness, and satisfaction. It is a harsh lesson on the other side of sublime. We all must suffer, whether we choose to or not. There must be value in that which is given in our lives, even though we hope and try to live joyfully and enjoy our brief time on earth.

~ Brent Green

Brent Green Aging Bereavement Cancer Death Grief Hospice Loss

Those of us who receive the blessing of a long life will also need to understand and manage grief and loss many times throughout our lives. Grief will come again, and again. Loss is a requisite part of the aging process and the human experience.

~ Brent Green

Brent Green Aging Bereavement Death Grief Loss

Suffering can precipitate creativity, liberating the creator through inspiration and then many available channels of human communication, and therefore there is value in suffering.

~ Brent Green

Brent Green Aging Bereavement Cancer Death Grief Hospice Loss

Death and parting are the same.

~ Abbas Ibn Al-Ahnaf

Abbas Ibn Al-Ahnaf Bereavement Death Grief Loss Parting Unrequited Love

Praise is the mode of love which always has some element of joy in it. Praise in due order; of Him as the giver, of her as the gift. Don’t we in praise somehow enjoy what we praise, however far we are from it? I must do more of this.

~ C.s. Lewis

C.s. Lewis Bereavement Grief Loss Love Mourning Praise

Grief is an emotional rollercoaster.You will have your ups and downsand moments of terrorand brief moments of peace.You can only go as fastas the ride will take you.Just remember:It will end and you will be okay.

~ Kate Mcgahan

Kate Mcgahan Bereavement Emotion Grief Loss Pet Rainbow Bridge Reincarnation Rollercoaster

She did not belong to the healthy group of widows and widowers who, after mourning, would nurture the seed of their grief into growing from loss—perhaps continuing the dreams of the lost, or learning to cherish alone the things they’d cherished together.She belonged instead to the sad lot who clung to grief, who nurtured it by never moving beyond it. They’d shelter it deep inside where the years padded it in saudade layers like some malignant pearl.

~ Darrell Drake

Darrell Drake Bereavement Grief Grief And Loss Grief Quotes Grieving Loss Widow Widower Widowhood

He may take long walksin the raining darkalmost aimlesslyto a spot of soaked grassin a neighbor’s open field.He’s decided this is the placefor you and him to meet again.

~ Kristen Henderson

Kristen Henderson Bereavement Confusion Dark Death Denial Disorientation Dying Grief Loss Man Cries Raining Sadness

Do youOr do you not knowYou're with me more deadThan you were livingReach me some timeIn a dream may beLet me remember how sweetYour presence can beReach out your handsAnd call to meFor soon it will beAnother anniv

~ Semba Jallow-Rutherford

Semba Jallow-Rutherford Bereavement Longing Loss Memory Presence

The bereaved need more than just the space to grieve the loss. They also need the space to grieve the transition.

~ Lynda Cheldelin Fell

Lynda Cheldelin Fell Bereavement Death Grief Hope Loss

Why do they lie?” she asked herself aloud. “They say time makes losing someone you loved easier to deal with, but it only makes it worse.

~ Rebecca Mcnutt

Rebecca Mcnutt Aloud Ask Bereavement Deal Death Dying Death Of A Friend Death Of A Loved One Easy Grief Lie Loss Love Mourning Saying Time Worse

Because she is in God's hands.' But if so, she was in God's hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body and if so, why? If God's goodness is inconsistent with hurting us, then either God is not good or there is no God: for the only life we know He hurts us beyond our worst fears and beyond all we can imagine. If it is consistent with hurting us, then He may hurt us after death is unendurably as before it.

~ C.s. Lewis

C.s. Lewis Bereavement Grief Loss Love

We get sombre about death. Think about Charon the ferryman rowing the souls across the Styx to the Isle of the Dead. Pretty grim stuff. Unless you think that, perhaps, at times, old Charon rows souls back to the land of the living too. Perhaps I have merely gone to rest awhile…

~ Sean J Halford

Sean J Halford Bereavement Death Existentialism Grief Loss

My mom’s smile is genuine,A lilac beamingIn the presence of her Sun.Indentions in the sand proveTime’s linear progression,Her hair yet unblighted,Carrying midnight’s consistency.Clear tracks fading as theMovement slips furtherIn the past.CheekbonesHigh, soft,In summer’s hue,Hopeful.Each step’s unknown impact,A future looking back.My father’s strength:One whoseLife is in his arms.Squinting past the camera,He rests upon a rockLike caramel corn half eaten,Just to the leftOf man-made concrete conventionDaylight’s eraserRemoving color to his right.Dustin sitsIn my father’s lap,Open mouth of a droolingBig mouth bass;Muscle toneOf a well exercisedJelly fish,He looks at meHalf aware;His wheelchairPerched at the edgeOf parking lot gravel graftedLike a scar on nature’s beach,Opening to the ironic splendorOf a bitter tasting lake.I took the picture.Age 11.Capturing the pinnacle arcOf a sonTo my lilacWhoOutlived him and weeps,Still.Their sky has staple holes –Maybe that’s how theLightLeaked out.

~ Darcy Leech

Darcy Leech Bereavement Inspirational Lilac Loss Metaphor Mother Poetry

Mourning is never really complete. The mappings of the old play remain in the cortex, like those mappings of the phantom limb.

~ Robert A Berezin

Robert A Berezin Bereavement Grief Loss Mourning

Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.

~ Euripides

Euripides Bereavement Dream Greek Grief Loss Mourning Shadow Tragedy

Death is never easy when you know the people doing the dying.

~ Oliver North

Oliver North Bereavement Death Death And Dying Death Of A Loved One Loss Pain

Someone experiencing the stages of grief is rarely aware of how his behavior might appear to others. Grief often produces a “zoom lens effect,” in which the focus is entirely on oneself, to the exclusion of external considerations.

~ Sol Luckman

Sol Luckman Bereavement Death Five Stages Of Grief Grief Kubler Ross Lack Of Perspective Loss Loss Of A Loved One Misery Myopia Narcissism Navel Gazing Orpaned Orphan Perspective Sorrow Tragedy Tragic

Christmas is such a time of struggle anyway, crammed with busy and hurry and the expectation that you will be joyful, no matter what. Then, if you’re like me, when you just sit quietly, just be, and let yourself feel what you feel, the guilt creeps in. Because you’re alive and the world is big, and you should be feeling some freakin’ Christmas spirit.

~ Anna White

Anna White Bereavement Christmas Christmas Humor Christmas Spirit Guilt Holidays Loss Memoir Shame Struggle
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