Also see: To Remember Me | Grow Old Along with Me | Quotes about the environment | Quotes about bluebirding | The Dragonfly Story | A poem by Jean Pillo | The Nest of the Loneliness Birds

The love lives on
- (Me)

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain
I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am that swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft star that shines at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there, I did not die.
~ Autumn Rain - Mary Frye, 1932

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er~fraught heart and bids it break
~ Shakespeare, Macbeth

Once you are dead, there is nothing "that can be done to you or for you or with you or about you that will do you any good or any harm; that any damage or decency we do accrues to the living, to whom your death happens, if it really happens to anyone. The living have to live with it. You don't. Theirs is the grief or gladness your death brings. Theirs is the loss or gain of it. Theirs is the pain and the pleasure of memory."
~ Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade

Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.
~Dylan Thomas

When I die ... if you need to cry, cry for your brother walking the street beside you,
and when you need me, put your arms around anyone
and give them what you need to give me....
Look for me in the people I've known or loved....
Love doesn't die, people do
So when all that's left of me is love,
give me away.
~ Meditations before Kaddish, Kaddis Yatom, Mourner's Kaddish

Blessed are those who mourn: for they shall be comforted.
~ Matthew 5:4

Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me.
~ Over the Rainbow, lyrics by E.Y. Harburg

The love we give away is the only love we keep.
~ Elbert Hubbard

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.
~ Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and John Kessler

Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality.
~ Emily Dickinson

There's a time that I remember, when I did not know no pain
When I believed in forever, and everything would stay the same
Now my heart feels like December when somebody say your name
'Cause I can't reach out to call you, but I know I will one day, yeah
Everybody hurts sometimes
Everybody hurts someday, aye aye
But everything gon' be alright
Go and raise a glass and say, aye
Here's to the ones that we got
Cheers to the wish you were here, but you're not
'Cause the drinks bring back all the memories
Of everything we've been through
Toast to the ones here today
Toast to the ones that we lost on the way
'Cause the drinks bring back all the memories
And the memories bring back you.
~ Maroon 5, Memories

I only miss you when I'm breathing
~ Jason DeRulo, Breathing

You are sure to be happy again.... The memory of your dear Father, instead of agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before.
~ Abraham Lincoln

What's remembered, lives.
~ Author unknown

In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all, and it often comes with bitter agony. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now believe that you will ever feel better. But this is not true. You are sure to be happy again. Knowing this, truly believing it, will make you less miserable now. I have had enough experience to make this statement.
~ Abraham Lincoln

Though much is taken, much abides.
~ Ulysses, by Tennyson

Like after a prairie fire… it seems like the end of the world. The Earth is all scorched and black and everything green is gone. But after the burning the soil's richer and new things can grow. People are like that too, you know. They start over. They find a way.
~ Celeste Ng

If there ever comes a day when we can't be together, keep me in your heart. I'll stay there forever.
~ Winnie the Pooh

It comes upon a person unbidden, without rational reflection. And you can no more reason your way out of it than you reasoned your way into it. It's also hard, if not impossible, to engage productively with other matters while you are in the grip of it. You might say that such states temporarily eclipse our rational capacities.
~ NYT article on dealing wtih triggered reactions and PTSD - also applies to grief.

Death does not have to be treated as an enemy for you to delight in life… I encourage you to make peace with death, to see it as the culminating adventure of this adventure called life. It is not an error. It is not a failure. It is taking off a tight shoe which you have worn well.
~ Ram Dass

We do not grieve without first loving.
We do not love without first gaining more
than we could ever lose.
~ Sunrise Greetings card

I'd like to tell you it gets easier. it doesn't. If there's any... comfort, it's... getting used to the pain, I suppose. Went to a grief seminar in Casper. Did you know that? I don't know why. Just wanted the bad to go away. Wanted answers... to questions that couldn't be answered. The counselor come up to me after the seminar and sat down next to me. And he said something that stuck with me. I don't know if it's what he said, or how he said it. He says, "I got some good news, and I got some bad news. Bad news is you're never gonna be the same. You're never gonna be whole, not ever again. You lost your daughter. Nothing's ever going to replace that. Now the good news is, as soon as you accept that, and you let yourself suffer... you allow yourself to visit her in your mind, and you'll remember all the love she gave you, all the joy she knew." Point is, Martin, you can't steer from the pain. If you do, you'll rob yourself... You'll rob yourself of every memory of her. Every last one. From her first step to her last smile. Kill 'em all. Just take the pain, Martin. You hear me? You take it. It's the only way you'll keep her with you.
~ From movie Wind River, Cory Lambert character

When sorrows like sea billows roll
- Hymn

When the present falls apart, so does the future we had associated with it. And having the future taken away is the mother of all plot twists.
~ Gottlieb

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
~ Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

Let me not die while I am still alive.
~ prayer

Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle morning can be… you learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language....

"He was 88" so deeply riles, because age is irrelevant in grief; and issue is not how old he was but how loved. Yes, he was 88, but a cataclysmic hole now suddenly gapes open in your life, a part of you snatched away forever....

To have love snatched from you, especially unexpectedly, and then be told to turn to memories. Rather than succor, my memories bring eloquent stabs of pain that say, "This is what you will never again have."

I have mourned in the past, but only now have I touched grief's core.

I cannot think too much, I dare not think too deeply, or else I will be defeated, not merely by pain but by a drowning nihilsm, a cycle of thinking there's no point, what's the point, there's no point to anything. I want there to be a point, even if I do not know, for now, what that point is.

I wish, I wish. The guilt gnaws at my soul. I think of all the things that could have happened and all the ways the world could be reshaped, to prevent what happened on 10 June, to make it un-happen.
~ Notes on Grief, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

God, how I hate solemn funerals. When I die, take me into a room and burn me. Then my family and a few good friends should get together, have a few good belts, and talk about the crazy old time we all had together.
~ John Wayne

Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
~ William Carlos Williams, The Widow’s Lament in Springtime

Write your sorrows in sand
and your blessings in stone

According to Darwin's Origin of teh Species, it is not the most intellectual of teh species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is best able to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.
~ Leon C. Megginson

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

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.
~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

In hours of calm reflection
In hours of social glee
If you should by recollection
Think of friends, think of me.
~ George Garber

...it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
~Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (the last lines of the novel that opens with "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.")

I wanted to tell her that her life will not go back, that she will never be the same, because a piece of her left with her child. And that even though the pain does not go away, somehow her soul will eventually make enough room so she can hold it all -- the grief, the pain, the joy, the love. I wanted to tell her...but I didn't. Instead I wrote this: "I'm sending love, for words are pointless right now."
~ Susi Costello, Shared by Hope's Seed

You must remember what you once had
what you still are
and you must hold onto that
~ from the TV series Fringe

When you're dreaming with a broken heart
The waking up is the hardest part
You roll out of bed and down on your knees
And for a moment, you can hardly breathe.
~ Dreaming with a Broken Heart, John Mayer

Let's drink to love - which is nothing, unless it's divided by two.

Memory can only tell us what we were,
in the company of those we loved;
it cannot help us find what each of us, alone, must now become.
Yet no person is really alone;
those who live no more echo still within our thoughts and words,
and what they did has become woven into what we are.
~ Jewish prayer

The mortality rate is holding at a scandalous 100 percent.
~ Tim Reider

Emotionally, grief is a mixture of raw feelings such as sorrow, anguish, anger, regret, longing, fear, and deprivation. Grief may be experienced physically as exhaustion, emptiness, tension, sleeplessness, or loss of appetite.
~ Judy Tatelbaum, The Courage to Grieve: The Classic Guide to Creative Living, Recovery, and Growth Through Grief

I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens.
~ Woody Allen

Grief is a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith...it is the price of love.
~ Author unkonwn

I wanted all of her, Not just what was pretty: I wanted her broken and bad, Her wild, And her winters; Anyone can love for a season, but I wanted the years

And can it be that in a world so full and busy the loss of one creature makes a void so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of eternity can fill it up!
~ Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

Please, don’t worry so much because in the end, none of us have very long on this Earth. Life is fleeting. And if you’re ever distressed, cast your eyes to the summer sky, when the stars are strung across the velvety night. When a shooting star streaks through the blackness, turning night into day, make a wish. Think of me. Make your life spectacular, I know I did.
~ Robin Williams in the movie Jack

I can't go on.
I'll go on.
~ Samuel Becket

...despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, [the death of a parent] dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and may cut free memories and feelings that we thought had gone to ground long ago. We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean's bed, aware of the depth charges, now near and now far, buffeting us with recollections.
~ Joan Didion, My Year of Magical Thinking

Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
~ ColdPlay, The Scientist

I know that's what people say-- you'll get over it. I'd say it, too. But I know it's not true. Oh, you'll be happy again, never fear. But you won't forget.
~ Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

we learn to face the reality and the pain of our loss, to say good-bye to the dead loved one, to restore ourselves, and to reinvest in life once again.
~ Judy Tatelbaum, The Courage to Grieve

There you go...let it all slide out. Unhappiness can't stick in a person's soul when it's slick with tears.
~ Shannon Hale, Princess Academy

Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That's its balance.” ―
~ Osho, Everyday Osho: 365 Daily Meditations for the Here and Now

You cannot tell how soon it may be too late.
~ Matthew Brady, Civil War photographer

She "isn’t going to stay trapped in the moment, no one ever is, still less in the very worst of moments, from which we always emerge, unless we’re sick in the head and feel justified by and even protected by our comfortable misery.”
~ The Infatuations, by Javier Marias  

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.
~ Elbert Hubbard

The feel of not to feel it,
When there is none to heal it
Nor numbed sense to steel it.
~ John Keats, In Drear-Nighted December

The cure for anything is salt water - tears, sweat, or the sea.
~ Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

The story of life is quicker
than the wink of an eye
the story of love is hello and goodbye
....until we meet again
~ Jimi Hendrix

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.”
~ John Greenleaf Whittier, Maud Muller - Pamphlet

Our lives become the sum of all whom we have loved. It is important not to waste anyone. One task of living out the last half of life is excavating and recovering all of those whom we loved in the first half. Thus, the recovery of lost loves becomes an important way in which the past affects the present.
~ George E. Vaillant, author of Aging Well

Although our love never dies, the pain of our loss can eventually dissolve.
~ Judy Tatelbaum, The Courage to Grieve

Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.
~ Nido Qubein

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

LIFE is a mosaic of pleasure and pain - grief is an interval between two moments of joy. Peace is the interlude between two wars. You have no rose without a thorn; the diligent picker will avoid the pricks and gather the flower. There is no bee without the sting; cleverness consists in gathering the honey nevertheless.
~Baba

There are people who leave an indelible mark on your soul – an input that can never be erased
~ Broyles, on the TV Show Fringe

Our misconception is in imagining that our suffering or how intensely or how long we grieve is a measure of how much we loved. In truth, none of us would want another's grief as a testimonial of their love for us. More likely we would want our loved ones to live healthy, fulfilled lives without us.
~ Judy Tatelbaum, The Courage to Grieve

You can smile
or you can cry.
I choose to smile.
~ from the TV show, Go On

I bow in reverence before the emotions of every melted heart....The more intense the delight in their presence, the more poignant the impression of their absence....When the tears of bereavement have had their natural flow, they lead us again to life and love's generous joy.
~ James Martineau

Love is a fabric that never fades, no matter how often it is washed in the tears of grief.
~ Anonymous

In my community there were two groups of people, There were the ones who did not die and the ones who came back to life.
~ Esther Perel, talking about Holocaust survivors

Most of us do not know the particulars of our end. Individual death is a vague and murky shade that hovers out there somewhere, in a vague and murky place we call the future. Is it this unknowing that allows us to go about the day free of terror? On an intellectual level, there really is no 'unknowing.' We do know. But the truth is too great for us to thoroughly accept, or too morbid, or too boring to consider on a moment to moment basis. In any case, as a result, much of life serves as a distraction from this truth.
~ Patrick McKenna Lynch Smith, Leaving the Life

I wish I could tell you it gets better.
It doesn't get better.
YOU get better.
~ Joan Rivers

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of confusion or despair, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing... not curing... that is a friend indeed.
~ Henri Nouwen

The end is only the beginning.

The clock of life is wound but once
And no man has the power
To tell just where the hands will stop,
At late or early hour.
To lose one's wealth is sad indeed,
To lose one's health is more.
To lose one's soul is such a loss
As no man can restore.
The present only is our own.
Live, love, toil with a will.
Place no faith in 'tomorrow'
For the clock may then be still.
~ The Clock of Life, possibly attributed to Robert H Smith

It is not our circumstances that define us, it is our response to circumstances.

All those who try to go it sole alone,
Too proud to be beholden for relief,
Are absolutely sure to come to grief.
~ Robert Frost

If it happened decades from now, it would probably still be too soon.
~ my friend Kim Fowler

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.
~ Gilda Radner

You never know what's around the corner, so stay on the train - the scenery will change.

Another misconception is that if we truly loved someone, we will never finish with our grief, as if continued sorrow is a testimonial to our love. But true love does not need grief to support its truth. Love can last in a healthy and meaningful way, once our grief is dispelled. We can honor our dead more by the quality of our continued living than by our constantly remembering the past.
~ Judy Tatelbaum, The Courage to Grieve

My suffering was going to be a drop in the bucket compared to all the human suffering experienced by people throughout human history, but still, it was going to be a suffering nevertheless.
~ Brooke Hopkins

Don't compare your life to others and don't judge them. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
~ Whisper of the heart (poster)

Grieving is not a short-term process; it's not even a long-term process; it's a lifelong process. 'Having a future' now means that although your life will flow again, it will flow differently as a result of the loss. Your grief will become incorporated into your life history, become a part of your identity. And you will continue now, and forever, to redefine your relationship with your deceased loved one. Death doesn't end the relationship, it simply forges a new type of relationship - one based not on physical presence but on memory, spirit, and love.
~ Transcending Loss by Ashley Davis Bush

Grief is not a disorder, a disease or sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.
~ Earl Grollman, unspokengrief.com

To an Organ Donor
.... If I could speak to those who mourn for you,
I'd try to tell them how your light still shines
on every page I read or write,
in every smiling face I see.
We may not have been on the same path before,
but today you walk with me.
~ Frances Talbott-White

A widower loves with the knowledge that love sometimes outlives the relationship. We love at our own risk in our own time.
~ Julia Anne Miller, NY Times Modern Love, Ready in Case the Other Shoe Should Drop

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
~ Emily Dickinson

Death leaves a heartache difficult to heal;
Love leaves sweet memories no one can steal
~ Headstone in Ireland, 1889

...often, an attempt at [comparative] deliverance proved false, misconstrued, and then seemed as the search for sunlight in the depths of a mine, forcing us back to the here-and-now, to the darkness of our misery, the horror of our predicament, with no visible means of escape. At such times, no one else in the entire universe knew our degree of suffering, because at such times, there was no one else in the universe.
~ Patrick ML Smith, Leaving the Life

Don’t try to heal me, fix me, or convert me: just be present. This is a great gift, a great skill.
~ Patrick ML Smith, Leaving the Life

The meaning of life is connected, inextricably, to the meaning of death; ...mourning is a romance in reverse, and if you love, you grieve and there are no exceptions....
~ Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking

Grief is neither an illness nor a pathological condition, but rather a highly personal and normal response to life-changing events, a natural process that can lead to healing and personal growth. The transition through this difficult time is the courageous journey.
~ Sandi Caplan and Gordon Lang, in Grief's Courageous Journey: A Workbook

The dead have no ears, no answering machines that we know of, still we call.
~ Bob Hicok, Leave a Message

And some survive the shock, the denial, the horror, the bargaining, the barren, empty aching, the unanswered prayers, the sleepless nights when their breath is crushed under the weight of silence and all that it means.
~ Mark Rickerby, How We Survive

A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty,
~ Philippe Aries, Western Attitudes toward Death.

The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
~ John Vance Cheney

We cannot control all that happens to us,
but we can control how we choose to respond. 
We can choose to overcome and survive it. 
~ Eleanora Ross

This thing that we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down.
~ Mary Pickford

Never, and I mean never, believe anyone's acts of kindness are not sincere. Let others be kind to you, do things for you, listen to you, talk to you, be with you and not talk, break down with you, laugh with you, etc.etc.etc. Do this, not only for you, but for them as well.
~ Duane Rice

If my heart had wings, I'd fly to you. A breath away's not far from where you are...
~Celtic Women, To Where You Are

The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.
~ C.S. Lewis

Don't wish me happiness, I don't expect to be happy all the time.... Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor. I will need them all.
~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

It will be the little things that you remember,
the quiet moments, the smiles, the laughter.
And although it may seem hard right now,
it will be the memories of these little things
that help to push away the pain
and bring the smiles back again

Love doesn't make the world go 'round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.
~ Franklin P. Jones

Love is what you've been through with somebody.
~ James Thurber

Sometimes the worst thing that happens to you, the thing you think you can't survive...it's the thing that makes you better than you used to be.
~ Jennifer Weiner

Grief is not an illness. I will not 'get over it.' I will learn to live with the pain. Don't change the subject when I talk about my loved one. If you don't know what to say, just hug me and shed a tear, for the ones that cry with me I will hold close to my heart forever.
~Tanya Lord, The Grief Toolbox

The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.
~ Mary Pickford

I'm no longer by your side,
But there's no need to weep;
I've left sweet recollections
I'm hoping you will keep.
Eternal joy and memories
stay in our hearts forever,
strengthening our special bond
That parting cannot sever.
...
And if times of loneliness
bring sorrow and dismay,
don't despair, for I am there....
Just a memory away
~ Rita S. Beer

Aionia I Mnimi (May his memory be eternal)

Grief changes us
The pain sculpts us
into someone who
understands more deeply
hurts more often
appreciates more quickly
cries more easily
hopes more desperately
loves more openly
~ Tanya Lord, The Grief Toolbox

One of the simplest ways to stay happy is letting go of the things that make you sad
~ Daily Dose

I keep myself busy with the things I do.
But every time I pause,
I still think of you.

Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.
~ A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

Grief is a skill never learned...no matter how many times we lose, grief is always new.
~ Patrick ML Smith

Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come
Whispering 'It will be happier.'
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

They who stand with breaking hearts around this little grave, need have no fear. The larger and nobler faith in all that is, and is to be, tell us us that death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest...the dead do not suffer.
~ Robert Green Ingersoll in 1882, at the graveside of a friend's child (he was called The Great Agnostic)

It is not necessary to hold on to grief in order to hold on to the one you lost. Coming to terms with loss doesn't mean letting go of the love you had for them, or forgetting them.
~ Donna Lowry

Grief doesn't change you. It reveals you.
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

Whether you are religious or nonreligious, may you find solace in the knowledge that the suffering is ours, but that those we love suffer no more.
~ Susan Jacoby

We must in tears
unwind a love knit up in many years
~ Henry King

Since you've gone
I've been lost without a trace
I dream at night, I can only see your face
I look around but it's you I can't replace
I feel so cold and I long for your embrace
I keep crying baby, baby please
~ Sting, Lyrics from "Every Breath You Take" (which is actually a song about stalking)

If you're going through hell, keep going.
~ Winston Churchill

When you're down and troubled
And you need a helping hand
And nothing, no nothing is going right.
Close your eyes and think of me
And soon I will be there
To brighten up even your darkest nights.
~Carole King, You've Got a Friend

It is hard to forget someone who gave us so much to remember.

Mindful grief means mourning and letting go of the past without expectation, fear, censure, blame, shame, control and so forth. Without such mindful grief, neither past nor person can be laid to rest.
~ David Richo, How to be an Adult in Relationships

The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return
~ Nat King Cole, lyrics from Nature Boy

You cannot do kindness too soon
for you never know how soon it will be too late.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.
~ Victor Frankel, Man's Search for Meaning

There are no words to describe the pain of burying a child, and specifically there is no word to label their new, lifelong status. If you lose a spouse, you are a widow; if you lose a parent, you are an orphan. But what about when you lose a child? How do you name something you cannot comprehend?
~ Lisa Belkin, Describing Grief, Motherlode Blog, New York Times, 06/08/2010

Every day I'll wear your memory like a favorite shirt upon my back
~ Richard Thompson

Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
~ - ?

I thought of you with love today, but that is nothing new.
I thought about you yesterday, and the days before that too.
I think of you in silence, I often speak your name.
All I have are memories and your picture in a frame.
Your memory is a keepsake from which I'll never part.
God has you in his keeping, I have you in my heart.
~ Author unknown

I've shed tears for what might have been, a million times I've cried.
If love could only have saved you, you never would have died.
In life I loved you dearly, in death I love you still.
In my heart you hold a place that no one else could ever fill.
~ Author unknown

It broke our hearts to lose you, but you didn't go alone,
For a part of us went with you the day God called you home.
~ God's Garden, Author unknown

To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.
~ Author unknown

The world may change from year to year,
And friends from day to day,
But sweet memories of you
Will never fade away
~ card from LifeChoice Donor Family Services

Love cures people,
Both the ones who give it
And the ones who receive it.
~ Karl Menninger

We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.
~ Charles Swindoll

When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
when the road you're trudging seems all up hill....
when you want to smile, but you have to sigh
when care is pressing you down a bit
rest, if you must, but don't you quit

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns....
~ Author unknown

Sorrow was no longer just a thought or an emotion, but something larger, something entire, a way of being: I am loss, I am sorrow.
~ Patrick ML Smith

Siblings may be ambivalent about their relationships in life, but in death the power of their bond strangles the surviving heart. Death reminds us that we are part of the same river, the same flow from the same source, rushing towards the same destiny. Were you close? Yes, but we didn’t know it then.
~ Barbara Ascher, Landscape Without Gravity

Time is really the only thing that truly helps.  I’m sorry to have to tell you that.  I wish I could bear some of the grief with you so that you could take a break from it.
~ DU, a friend

Looking back on the memory of
The dance we shared beneath the stars above
For a moment all the world was right
How could I have known
that you'd ever say goodbye

And now I'm glad I didn't know
The way it all would end
the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I'da had to miss the dance

Holding you I held everything
For a moment wasn't I the king
But if I'd only known
how the king would fall
Hey who's to say
you know I might have changed it all

And now I'm glad I didn't know
The way it all would end
the way it all would go

Our lives are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I'da had to miss the dance
~ Garth Brooks, lyrics to The Dance

Everything is meant to be lost, that the soul may stand in unhampered nothingness
~ Meister Eckhart

Weep not for those
who sink within the arms of death
ere yet the chilling wintry breath
of sorrow o'er them blows;
But weep for them who here remain,
the mournful heritors of pain,
Condemn'd to see ech bright joy face,
and mark grief's melancholy shade
flung o'er Hope's fairest rose.
~ Mrs. Embury

Miracles...rest not so much upon...healing power coming suddenly near us from afar but upon our own perceptions being made finer, so that, for a moment, our eyes can see...what is there around us always.
~ Willa Cather

A ghost is a manifestation of guilt, a forgiveness demanded, a memory contested.
~ Thomas Mira y Lopez, The Book of Resting Places

Undo it, take it back, 
make every day the previous one 
until I am returned to the day 
before the one that made you gone....
losing this day, then that, 
until the day of loss still lies ahead, 
and you are here instead of sorrow.
~ Nessa Rapoport, A Woman's Book of Grieving

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. ... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
~ John Donne, Meditation XVII

Some survivors  try to think their way through grief.
That doesn't work.
Grief is a releasing process,  a discovery process,  a healing process.
We cannot release or discover or heal by the use of our minds alone.
The brain must follow the heart  at a respectful distance.
It is our hearts that ache when a loved one dies.
It is our emotions that are most drastically affected.
Certainly the mind suffers, the mind recalls,the mind may plot and plan and wish,
but it is the heart that will blaze the trail through the thicket of grief.
~ Carol Staudacher, A Time to Grieve : Meditations for Healing After the Death of a Loved One

A wound does not destroy us. It activates our self-healing powers. The point is not to "put it behind you" but to keep benefiting from the strength it has awakened.
~ David Richo, How to be an Adult in Relationships

Everyone has two lives. The second one begins when you realize you have only one.
~ Steven Sotloff, in a letter to family before he was beheaded by ISIS

Death should come gently to one of gentle mould, like thee,
as light winds, wandering through groves of bloom,
detach the delicate blossom from the tree.
Close thy sweet eyes calmly, and without pain,
And we will trust in God to see thee yet again. .
~Epitaph from a tombstone in Cypress Grove Cemetery in New Orleans, adapted from Bryant

A precious one from us is gone.
A voice we loved is stilled
A place is vacant in our home
That never can be filled
~ Epitaph from a grave marker

How short is life, how sure is death
Our days alas how few,
Our mortal life is but a breath
Tis like the morning dew.
~ Epitaph from a grave marker

Promise me something. When I die, you will never work for A.L.S. No fund-raising, no telethons, not even a bake sale. Nothing. You are now allowed to let my A.L.S. become your life. If you become a professional widow, I will haunt you. I will haunt you hard.
~ Gene Fiffer, who died of ALS in April 1978

I cannot say, and I will not say
that she is dead. – She is just away!
With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand,
she has wandered into an unknown land,
and left us dreaming of how very fair
it needs must be, since she lingers there....
Think of her still as the same, I say:
She is not dead – she is just away.
~ Away, by James Whitcomb Riley

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal,
love leaves a memory no one can steal
~ Irish headstone

The heart’s keen anguish only those can tell,
Who’ve bid the dearest and best farewell.
~ Epitaph from a grave marker

In the rising of the sun and in its going down,
In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter,
In the opening of the buds and in the warmth of summer,
In the rustling of leaves and the beauty of autumn,
In the beginning of the year and when it ends,
When we are weary and in need of strength,
When we are lost and sick of heart,
When we have joys we yearn to share,
So long as we live, they too shall live, 
For they are now a part of us, as 
We remember them.
~Gates of Prayer, Reform Judaism Prayer Book

Life is trouble. Only death is not.
~ Zorba the Greek

The dark domain of death we dread, indeed, to enter, but we ought rather to dread the ruggedness of some of the roads that lead to it....
~ Colton

What we call life is a journey to death, and what we call death, is a passport to life.
~ Colton

What is the worst of woes that wait on age?
What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?
To view each loved one blotted from life's page
And be alone on earth, as I am now.
~ Byron

Pale death approaches with equal step, and knocks indiscriminately at the door of the cottage, and the portals of the palace.
~ Horace

If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together, there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart... I'll always be with you....If there ever comes a day when we can't be together, keep me in your heart, I'll stay there forever.
~ Winnie the Pooh

O death! thou strange mysterious power, seen every day, yet never understood but by the uncommunicative dead, what art thou?
~ Lillo

All was ended now, the hope, and the fear and the sorrow,
All the aching of the heart, the restless, unsatisfied longing,
All the dull, deep pain, and constant anguish of patience!
~ Longfellow

When someone dies, you don't get over your grief by forgetting, you get through your grief by remembering.
~ Author unknown

(Death of a child)
Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with friendly care;
The opening bud to Heaven conveyed
And bade it blossom there.
~ Coleridge

Pain is the difference between what is
and what I want it to be. 
~ Spencer Johnson, The Precious Present

If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus 1 day, so I never have to live without you.
~ Winnie the Pooh

Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Baby steps. You can do it.
~ Doug Zimmerman (coaxing me up a mountain)

Painful memories can become a memory of pain.
~ Donna Lowry, grief counselor

They are not dead
who live in lives they leave behind.
~ Hugh Robert Orr

I miss her all the time. I know in my head that she has gone. the only difference is that I am getting used to the pain. It's like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, you forget it's there and keep falling in. After a while, it's still there, but you learn to walk round it.
~ The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce

Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.
~CS Lewis

The English language has about 450,000 commonly used words, but more may be needed. What to you call someone who has lost a sibling or had a miscarriage? Or a gay person whose partner has died? Or an elderly person who has lost every friend and relative? So many heartaches can’t be found in the dictionary.
~ Jeffrey Zaslow, The Wall Street Journal

The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very very brightly
~ from the film Blade Runner

The span between life and death can be as quick and sudden as a puff of wind that blows out a candle. But the candle does not suffer after darkness comes. It is the person left in the dark room who gropes and stumbles.
~ Helen Duke Fike

What matters is not what life does to you but rather what you do with what life does to you.
~ Edgar Jackson

A ship is safe in harbor, but that is not what a ship is for.
~ Thomas Aquinas

I walked a mile with Pleasure.
She chattered all the way,
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne’er a word said she;
But oh, the things
I learned from her
When Sorrow walked with me!
~ Robert Browning

It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.
~Colette

Some people live a larger life,
no matter what life's length.
By looking on the brighter side,
They find an inner strength.

They take whatever time they have
and live for all they're worth,
Spreading love and happiness
to others here on earth.

They laugh a little louder
and care a little more
and show through their example
just what life is for.

Although we miss them
when they're gone
what stories we can tell
of how they made a difference
by simply living well.
- Hallmark card

all sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story or tell a story about them.
~ Isak Dinesen

Please be gentle with me for I am grieving.
The sea I swim in is a lonely one, and the shore seems miles away.

Waves of despair numb my soul as I struggle through each day.

My heart is heavy with sorrow.
I want to shout and scream and repeatedly ask, “WHY?”

At times, my grief overwhelms me, and I weep bitterly, so great is my loss.

Please don’t turn away or tell me to move on with my life.
I must embrace my pain before I can begin to heal.

Companion me through my tears and sit with me in loving silence.
Honor where I am in my journey, not where you think I should be.

Listen patiently to my story.
I may need to tell it over and over again.
It’s how I begin to grasp the enormity of my loss.

Nurture me through the weeks and months ahead.
Forgive me when I seem distant and inconsolable.

A small flame still burns within my heart, and shared memories may trigger both laughter and tears.

I need your support and understanding.
There is no right or wrong way to grieve.
I must find my own path.

Please, will you walk beside me?
~ Jill B. Englar

After you, who would supply my sky of blue? After you, who dould I love? After you, why should I take the time to try, for who else could qualify, after you, who? ...., For without you there what could I do? I could search years, but who else could change my tears into laughter after you?
~ After You, Who? by Cole Porter

Why is the measure of love loss?
~ Jeanette Winterson, The Daylight Gate

When it comes to grief, the normal rules of wealth do not apply. Because grief transcends value. A man would give entire nations to lift grief off his heart and yet, you cannot buy anything with grief, because grief is worthless.
~ Cormac McCarthy, The Counselor

Your rational mind can not make sense of your loss – but your heart, if you allow it to, will find its own intuitive way.
~ from TV series, Fringe

In mindful grief, we become the landing strip that allows any feelings to arrive. Some crash, some land softly. Some harm us, but none harm us in a lasting way. We remain as they taxi away or as their wreckage is cleared away. We can trust that we will survive.
~ David Richo, How to be an Adult in Relationships

I’ll be seeing you
in all the old familiar places
that this heart of mine embraces
all day through....
I’ll be seeing you
in every lovely summer’s day,
in everything that’s light and gay.
I’ll always think of you that way.
I’ll find you in the morning sun, And when the night is new,
I’ll be looking at the moon ~
but I’ll be seeing you.
~ Irving Kahal and Sammy Fain, lyrics of I'll Be Seeing You

You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.
~ Bob Marley

Who will I be in the future when the unholy, unbearable pain that now rips and tears at me every waking minute fades into a more chronic, dull, lifetime ache? I know that I will be different — forever. Just … different. I can tell you already that losing my child is an experience so profoundly disorienting that I suddenly feel like a Martian among humans. Yes, I have been rerouted to Mars. And there doesn’t appear to be quite enough air up here.
~ Katie Allison Granju

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
~ Plato

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing:
the last of the human freedoms —
to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one’s own way.
~ Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

God gave us memories,
that we might have roses in December.
~ J. M. Barrie

The word “widow,” means “empty” in Sanskrit

Grief is a tidal wave that overtakes you,
smashes down upon you with unimaginable force,
sweeps you up into its darkness,
where you tumble and crash against unidentifiable surfaces,
only to be thrown out on an unknown beach, bruised, reshaped....
~ Stephanie Ericsson, Companion Through The Darkness: Inner Dialogues on Grief

When I miss you the most, I look inside and there you are.

Think of a lifeless forest in which a small plant pushes its head upward, out of the ruin. In our grief process, we are moving into life from death, without denying the devastation that came before.
~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler, in On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss

I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again.
~ James Taylor, Fire and Rain lyrics

I never thought I could go on living when you died, but - I did.
I never thought I would survive after burying you, but - I did.
I never thought I'd get through those first days, weeks and months, but - I did.
I never thought I would be able to endure the first anniversary of your death, but - I did.
I never thought I would let myself love my new grandchild, but - I did.
I never thought tomorrow would be different, but - it was.
I never thought I would stop crying for you, but - I have.
I never thought that I would ever sing again, but - I have.
I never thought the pain would "soften," but - it has.
I never thought I would care if the sun shone again, but - I do.
I never thought I would be able to entertain again, but - I have.
I never thought I would be able to control my grief, but - I can.
I never thought I could function without medication again, but - I can.
I never thought I'd smile again, but - I do.
I never thought I would laugh out loud again, but - I do.
I never thought I would look forward to tomorrow, but - I do.
I never thought I'd reconcile your death, but - I have.
I never thought I would be able to create that "new normal," but - I have.
I never thought I'd want to go on living after you died, but - I do.
Always missing you,
always loving you,
and thinking of you daily,
with a smile on my face
and tears in my heart.
~ Author unknown

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain.
~ Unknown

The greatest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.
~ Thornton Wilder

Evoke one good memory for each bad one from now on.
~ David Richo, How to Be an Adult in Relationships

No person is truly ever alone.
Those who live no more,
whom we loved,
echo still within our thoughts,
our words, our hearts.
And what they did
and who they were
becomes a part of all that we are,
forever.
~ Richard Fife

Make music with what remains.
Complete the song left for us to sing,
Transcend the loss,
Play it out with heart, soul and might
With all remaining strength within us.
~ Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis

You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying overhead,
but you can prevent them from making nests in your hair.
~ Chinese Proverb

Hold on to life even when it is easier letting go.
Hold on to my hand even when I have gone away from you.
~ Pueblo blessing

All thy old woes shall now smile on thee,
and thy pains sit bright on thee.
All thy sorrows here shall shine
and thy sufferings be divine;
Tears shall take comfort and turn to gems
and wrongs repent to diadems
Even thy deaths shall live and new
dress the soul that once they slew.
~ Richard Crashaw, Hymn to Saint Theresa

...grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time,
accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.
~ The Serenity Prayer

For survivors, the word closure often connotes that the bereaved are underachievers who flunked a grief course.
~ Rabbi Dr. Earl Grollman

I know you think the world is too dark to even dream in color, but I've seen flowers bloom at midnight. I've seen kites fly in gray skies and they were real close to looking like the sunrise, and sometimes it takes the most wounded wings, the most broken things to notice how strong the breeze is, how precious the flight.
~ Andrea Gibson

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.... All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
~ from the film Blade Runner

You've changed me more than you know, and will always be a part of everything I am. That's one thing I've learned from this. No one you love is ever truly lost.
~ Paula McLain, The Paris Wife

...it takes time to untangle the threads surroundings death - guilt, fear, anger and love - but it's work that needs to be done.... because no matter how much we hate it, death will come.
~ Theresa Brown, author of Critical Care: A New Nurse Faces Death, Life, and Everything in Between

...death inevitably brings regret for what might have been, what now will never be.
~ Theresa Brown, author of Critical Care: A New Nurse Faces Death, Life, and Everything in Between

You're in the arms of the Angels;
may you find some comfort here
~ Sarah McLachlan, lyrics to Angel

Grief work takes more time and effort than most people ever anticipate. And even after weeks, months, and years later, grief may ebb, but never ends....
~ Dr. Jimmy Holland

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.

Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms.
~ Audrey Hepburn

Love does not die, people do.
So, when all that's left of me is love,
give me away as best you can.
~ Author unknown

It is ironic that the presence of an absence can be so emotionally devastating.
– Bill Jenkins, What to Do When the Police Leave: A Guide to the First Days of Traumatic Loss

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief or bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face us with the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
~ Henri J. M. Nouwen in Out of Solitude; Three Meditations on the Christian Life

Remembering you is easy.
I do it every day.
Missing you is the heartache
that never goes away.

From rain will come flowers.
Every single time.
Like clockwork.
~ Elle Febbo

What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.
~ Helen Keller

When I hold back my tears, my throat grows tight, my chest aches, my stomach knots . . . because I’m trying to protect you from my tears. Then we both hurt . . . me, because my feelings are held inside, causing pain and a shield against our closeness . . . and you, because suddenly we’re emotionally distant. So please, take my hand and see me through my tears . . . then we can be close again
– Kelly Osmont, What Can I Say and Do? How to Support Someone Who Is Grieving a Loss

You will find that it is necessary to let things go; simply for the reason that they are heavy.
~ ProjectForgive.com

Grief comes in one size, Extra Large. If we tuck it away in the bottom drawer where it never sees the light of day, it remains exactly the same. On the other hand, if we wear it, feel it, talk about it, and share it with others, it is likely that it will become faded, shrunk and worn, or will simply no longer fit. When grief has served its purpose, we are able to recognize the many gifts we have gained.
~ Dianne Arcangel, in Life After Loss : Conquering Grief and Finding Hope

You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading your last one.
~ Nancy Holowaty.

Why does the sun go on shining
Why does the sea rush to shore
Don't they know it's the end of the world
'Cause you don't love me anymore.

Why do the birds go on singing
Why do the stars glow above
Don't they know it's the end of the world
It ended when I lost your love.

I wake up in the morning and I wonder
Why everything's the same as it was
I can't understand, no I can't understand
How life goes on the way it does.

Why does my heart go on beating
Why do these eyes of mine cry
Don't they know its the end of the world
It ended when you said goodbye.
~ Skeeter Davis, The End of the World

We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past.  But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future.  Every single thing that has ever happened in your life is preparing you for a moment that is yet to come. ~ http://www.lifebuzz.com/just-stop/

If you truly want to grow as a person and learn, you should realize that the universe has enrolled you in the graduate program of life, called loss. ~ Elisabeth Kübler~Ross

The most beautiful people we have known
are those who have known defeat,
known suffering, known struggle, known loss,
and have found their way out of the depths.
These persons have an appreciation,
a sensitivity, and an understanding of life
that fills them with compassion, gentleness,
and a deep, loving concern.
~ Roy and Jane Nichols

Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.
Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

The span between life and death can be as quick and sudden as a puff of wind that blows out a candle. But the candle does not suffer after darkness comes. It is the person left in the dark room who gropes and stumbles.
~ Helen Duke Fike, Interregnum

When I look to the sky something tells me you're here with me
And you make everything alright 
And when I feel like I'm lost something tells me you're here with me
And I can always find my way when you are here 

And every word I didn't say that caught up in some busy day
And every dance on the kitchen floor we didn't have before
And every sunset that we'll miss I'll wrap them all up in a kiss
And pick you up in all of this when I sail away 

And as I float along this ocean
I can feel you like a notion that I hope will never leave

Whether I am up or down or in or out or just plane overhead
Instead it just feels like it is impossible to fly
But with you I can spread my wings
to see me over everything that life may send me 
When I am hoping it won't pass me by 

And when I feel like there is no one that will ever know me
there you are to show me

Cause when I look to the sky something tells me you're here with me
And you make everything alright 
And when I feel like I'm lost something tells me you're here with me
And I can always find my way when you are here 
~ Lyrics from When I Look to the Sky by Train

It's not about surviving. It's about living.
~ The Takeaway (NPR)

Perhaps they are not stars in the sky, but
rather openings in Heaven
where the love of our lost ones pours through
and shines down upon us
to let us know they are happy.
~ Unknown

To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as if nothing of consequence will happen. On the contrary, when we are playful with one another, we relate as free persons, and the relationship is open to surprise; everything that happens is of consequence…
for seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcome of open possibility.
To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for unlimited possibility.
~ James Carse

When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that, in truth, you are weeping for that which has been your delight
~ Kahlil Gibran

Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how could I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, “What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?”

“Oh,” he said, “for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!” Whereupon I replied, “You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering – to be sure, at the price that now you have to mourn her.” He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of sacrifice.
~ Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

Not knowing when the Dawn will come, I open every Door.
~ Emily Dickinson

It is the denial of death that is partially responsible for people living empty, purposeless lives; for when you live as if you'll live forever, it becomes too easy to postpone the things that you must do. You live your life in preparation for tomorrow or in remembrance of yesterday, and meanwhile, each today is lost.
~ Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying

The best way out is always through
~ Robert Frost

When we mourn, isn’t it not just for our relationship with a person, but also for the physical presence of her, her aliveness? The voice, smell, textures and warmth, the gestures we know intimately, all of these are replaced with their opposites in death. We are left with a hole that the energy that powered the person through life once filled.
~ Jennifer Holland

modern medicine has yet to make even one person immortal.
~ Ira Byrock, author of The Best Care Possible: A Physician's Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life

We cannot, after all, judge a biography by its length, by the number of pages in it; we must judge by the richness of the contents..... Sometimes the 'unfinisheds' are among the most beautiful symphonies.
~Victor Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul

Spring does not refuse to come because it was preceded by winter.
~ Judy Tatelbaum, The Courage to Grieve

Funeral Blues, by W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Always do what you are afraid to do
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. Therefore be swift to love, make haste to be kind.
~Henri-Frederic Amiel (1821~1881)

Sometimes when things seem to be falling apart, they may actually be falling into place.

...if the dead can come back to this earth, and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you~in the garish day, and the darkest night amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours~always, always, and, if the soft breeze fans your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air cools your throbbing temples, it shall be my spirit passing by.
~ Sullivan Ballou to his wife Sarah, 1861

to make an end is to make a beginning
~ T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

If I die, survive me with such a pure force
that you dispel the fury of the pallor and the cold....
I don't want your laugh or your footsteps to waver,
I don't want my legacy of happiness to die.
Don't call to my heart, I am not there
Live in my absence as in a house....
It is a house so transparent
that I without life will see you living
and if you suffer, my love, I will die a second time.
~ Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XCIV

Distraction can be just as good as peace-when you don't have it
~ Cory Scott Whittier

Loss. Isn’t that the hardest lesson of human existence? The finality of losing someone you love, of having them fall right out of your life forever: the cold and terrible permanence of it.
~ Julie Myerson

Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something.
~ H. Jackson Brown Jr.

When you love someone, it is never too soon to say, "I love you," or premature to say, "Thank you," "I forgive you," or "Will you please forgive me?" ...These simple words hold essential wisdom for transforming that which matters most in our lives ~ our relationships with the people we love.
~ Ira Byock, M.D, The Four Things That Matter Most : A Book About Living

Each day's a gift and not a given right
~ Nickelback - If Today Was Your Last Day Lyrics

Who can say for certain, maybe you're still here
I feel you all around me, your memory so clear.....
As my heart holds you just one beat away,
I cherish all you gave me everyday
~ Performed by Josh Groban, composed by Richard Marx

If their song is to continue, then we must do the singing.
~ Elaine Stillwell, in "Singing Their Song," Grief Digest, Volume 2, Issue #4

The past is a guidepost, not a hitching post.
~ L. Thomas Holdcroft

Let fate do her worst; there are relics of joy,
Bright dreams of the past, which she cannot destroy;
And which come in the night-time of sorrow and care,
To bring back the features that joy used to wear.
Long, long be my heart with such memories filled,
Like the vase in which roses have once been distilled;
You may break, you may ruin the vase, if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.
~ T. Moore

A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain.
~ Mildred Witte Stouven

I have learned that when one is on their own, for what ever reason, one has to force oneself participate in life. It's not easy, but we need to remain a part of the world.
~ Linda Karen Peterson

I don't think of him every day; I think of him every hour of every day.
~ Gregory Peck, in an interview many years after his son's death

It is strangely reassuring ~ this suggestion that the pain of that empty space will always be with us. Because while we do want to feel better, we do not want, ever, to forget.

We will, of course, find new places to put the affection and love and time that we used to pour out to the one we lost. Not to do that would be to turn inward, refuse to be vulnerable ~ a poor memorial, a poor stewardship of the life left to us....
~ Martha Whitmore Hackman

Grief can be the garden of compassion.
~ Rumi

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Rainy Day

Live your life as if she were still alive.
- from the film One Day

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The road uphill and the road downhill are one and the same
~ Heraclitus

I have been trying to make the best of grief and am just beginning to learn to allow it to make the best of me.
~ Barbara Lazear Ascher, Landscape without Gravity

The only grief that does not end is grief that has not been fully faced
~ Judy Tatelbaum, The Courage to Grieve

Just like a balloon, with the last bit of air just ~pfffft ~ right out of the balloon, I felt my energy lift and my spirit surrender....I said goodbye to my life....I felt expansive, like a genie just liberated from her bottle, and my spirit soared free....
~Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, brain researcher who suffered a massive stroke in her left hemisphere

Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is. I am not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do?
~ Epicurus

They say in the end
your good friends pull you through.
But everyone knows
that my best friend was you
~ Lyrics to Homeless, by Loudon Wainwright III (written after his best friend, his mother, died)

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind.
~ William Wordsworth

The future just ain't what it used to be
~ Yogi Berra

If we expand our perspective and look beyond the immediate discomfort of grieving, we will see that it is a process of adaptation and growth, one not to be discounted or avoided.
~ Julie Simon, The Emotional Eater's Repair Manual: A Practical Mind-Body-Spirit Guide for Putting an End to Overeating and Dieting

Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end.
~ Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow....
~ T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, I. The Burial of the Dead

You cannot always have happiness, but you can always give happiness.

It's loving and giving that make life worth living.
~ Ella Higginson

I can't quit now, this can't be right
I can't take one more sleepless night
Without you, without you
I won't soar, I won't climb
If you're not here, I'm paralyzed
Without you, without you
I can't look, I'm so blind
I lost my heart, I lost my mind
Without you, without you ...
I am lost, I am in vain,
I will never be the same
Without you, without you
~ David Guetta, lyrics to Without You

Life is short, and it’s up to you to make it sweet.
~ Sadie Delany

...the love we hold back is the only pain that follows us here. And the memory of that love shouldn't make you unhappy for the rest of your life.
- Always, 1989, Richard Dreyfuss as Peter Sandich

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length
~ Robert Frost

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone who journeyed through the night
with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world
to say it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where like a shadow or a friend.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye from The Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

it takes courage to get out of bed in the morning and climb into the day
~ Edward Hirsch, author of Gabriel: A Poem

Every life comes with a death sentence
~ From the TV Series Breaking Bad, Walter White character

When you put your hand in the flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before and the first of what is still to come.
~ Leonardo da Vinci

Since you’ve been gone
my world is empty
Like a desert without sand
Like an ocean without water
Like a country without land.

Since you’ve been gone
my world is empty
My days are hard and long
I’m like a fish out of the water
I’m like a bird without a song
~ Mary Chancey, excerpted from a poem Since You've Been Gone

Black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough.
~ Theodore Roosevelt

The moment that you died
my heart was torn in two,
one side filled with heartache
the other died with you.
I often lie awake at night,
when all the world is fast asleep
and take a walk down memory lane
with tears upon my cheeks.
Remembering you is easy,
I do it every day,
but missing you is heart ache
that never goes away.
I hold you tightly in my heart
and there you will remain
Until the joyous day arrives
when we will meet again.
~ Unknown

Saying someone can't be sad because someone else may have it worse
is just like saying someone can't be happy because someone else may have it better

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
~ Robert Frost, Reluctance

Grief is love's unwillingness to let go.

And if I go, while you’re still here…..
Know that I live on,
Vibrating to a different measure
Behind a thin veil you cannot
See through.
You will not see me,
So you must have faith.
I wait for the time when
We can soar together again,
Both aware of each other.
Until then, live your life to its fullest
And when you need me,
Just whisper my name in your heart,
…….I will be there.
~ Emily Dickinson

Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.
~ Walter Gretsky, father of hockey player Wayne

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
~ C.S. Lewis

Lost dreams, shattered hope, an altered future
– nothing is as I had planned.
~ Source?

Treat yourself with the same kind of love, respect, and patience that you would offer to a friend, and listen to yourself.
~ Laynee Gilbert, from I Remember You: A Grief Journal

When all your hope has gone
And everything you love has gone away
Whatever gets you through the day
That's your way
~ Lighthouse Family lyrics

Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
~ Regina Brett

I cried the day you passed away
I cried for you today.
Although I loved you dearly,
I couldn't make you stay.
A golden heart stopped beating,
hard working hands at rest.
God broke my heart to prove to me
He only takes the best.
~ Unknown

(Actually, he takes everybody)

However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
~ Regina Brett

I'm not interested in blind optimism, but I'm very interested in optimism that is hard-won, that takes on darkness sand then says, 'This is not enough.' But it takes time, more time than we can sometimes imagine, to get there. And sometimes we don't.
~ author Colum McCann speaking to Newtown students.

Don’t sell the farm in the winter time. Remember that spring is just around the corner.
~ Author unknown

What is the source of our first suffering? It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak. It was born in the moment when we accumulated silent things within us.
~ Colum McCann

After the game, the King and the Pawn go into the same box.
~ Italian proverb

...So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.
Crowned with lilies and with laurel they go
but I am not resigned. 

...The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses.
Elegant and curled Is the blossom.
Fragrant is the blossom. I know.
But I do not approve. 
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world. 
~ Dirge Without Music - Edna St. Vincent Millay

In the end, all that matters in life is that you loved and were loved.
~ Bet Zimmerman

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them
~ George Eliot

The sky is crying
look at the tears roll down the street ...
the weeping willows weep for me
~ George Thorogood and the Destroyers, The Sky is Crying

[We] are often willing to take on responsibility and guilt rather than admit something even scarier: that accidents happen; that even the most ordinary among us live in a world of risk and randomness that we don’t control. Sometimes, blaming ourselves feels safer than this realization that the world is an unpredictable and even dangerous place. But self-blaming and shame isolate and shrivel the human spirit.
~ Gregory Orr, When a Child Kills, NYT, 08/29/2014

When parents die, they are buried in the ground. When a child dies, you bury the child in your heart.
~ Korean proverb

Grief is a collection of feelings that we need to experience, not a handicap that we must overcome.
~ paraphrasing Dr. Alan D. Wolfelt, Understanding Grief

On the positive side, the acute grief of withdrawal motivated us to dig deeper, reach all the way down to our untapped resources. We panned for our grittiest reserves and came up with survival skills and hidden strengths that amazed us.
~ Susan Anderson, Suffering the Death of a Loved One

What's gone and what's past help should be past grief.
~ William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale

No more let Life divide what Death can join together.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Invitation of Adonais

Grieving is an important part of life and it is not a linear process. It has been described as "coming in waves." One minute we might feel fine and then something will happen to trigger memories and then the grief can come again. While death is a part of life, the grieving process is critical to understand in helping us to move on with life.
~ J.E. Reed, The Grief Blog

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.
~ Robert Fulghum

People won't remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel.

I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again
~ James Taylor, Fire and Rain

When we really lose ourselves, is when we really find ourselves

The tide recedes, but leaves behind
Bright seashells on the sand.
The sun goes down but gentle warmth
Still lingers on the land.
The music stops and yet it lingers on
In sweet refrain.
For every joy that passes
Something beautiful remains
~ The Tide Recedes - M D Hughes

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer it.
~ Rabindranath Tagore, Fruit~Gathering

Invisible tears are the hardest to wipe away. Just let it out, my friend.
~Terri Guillemets

I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.
~ Abraham Lincoln

Grief is a roller coaster, not a series of stages....Like many roller coasters, the ride tends to be rougher in the beginning, the lows may be deeper and longer. The difficult periods should become less intense and shorter as time goes by, but it takes time to work through a loss.
~ Hospice Foundation of America

History isn't destiny
~ Christina D. Romer

They say that there is a reason
They say that time will heal
But neither time nor reason
Will change the way we feel
For no one knows the heartache
That lies behind our smiles
No one knows how many times
We've broken down and cried
We want to tell you something
So there won't be any doubt
You are so wonderful to think of
But so hard to live without.
~ Author?

What cannot be cured must be endured, and how to endure is, even now, the hardest challenge every one of us will face.
~ Russ Douthat

’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
~ Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam, xxvii, Stanza 4.

Mourn these losses. None of the folks you miss can ever be replaced. But know they are not truly lost to you, for they left part of themselves in who you are....
~ Carol Luebering, Coping with the Losses that Life Brings

Warm summer sun, shine kindly here;
Warm southern wind, blow softly here;
Green sod above, lie light, lie light;
Good night, dear heart, good night, good night.
~ Warm Summer Sun - Mark Twain

There's no pain on earth that doesn't crave a benevolent witness.
~ Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings

Nothing can fill the gap when we are away from those we love, and it would be wrong to try to find anything.....It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap; he does not fill it, but keeps it empty so that our communion with another may be kept alive, even at the cost of pain.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of the pain before we have learned what it has to teach us.
~ Richard Rohr

We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance.
~ Marcel Proust

Your life will never be the same again, but it can still be good.
~ Me

Look on each day that comes as a challenge, as a test of courage. The pain will come in waves, some days worse than others, for no apparent reason. Accept the pain. Little by little, you will find new strength, new vision, born of the very pain and loneliness which seem, at first, impossible to master.
~ Daphne du Maurier

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
~ Richard Dawkins

When we bury the old, we bury the known past, the past we imagine sometimes better than it was, but the past all the same, a portion of which we inhabited. Memory is the overwhelming theme, the eventual comfort.

But burying infants, we bury the future, unwieldy and unknown, full of promise and possibilities, outcomes punctuated by our rosy hopes. The grief has no borders, no limits, no known ends, and the little infant graves that edge the corners and fencerows of every cemetery are never quite big enough to contain that grief.
~ Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking

The denial of death is openly acknowledged as a significant trait of our culture. The tears of the bereaved have become comparable to the excretions of the diseased
~ Phillippe Aries

Some people think that to be strong is never to feel pain. In reality, the strongest people are the ones who feel it, understand it, and accept it.
~positiveoutlooksblog.com

Believe me, every heart has it's secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold when he is only sad.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.
~ James Russell Lowell

The end of caregiving isn't freedom. It's grief.
~ Margaret Renkl

Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same
If I saw you in heaven

I must be strong,
and carry on
'Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven

Would you hold my hand
If I saw you in heaven?
Would you help me stand
If I saw you in heaven?

Time can bend your knee
Time can break your heart
Have you begging please
Begging please

Beyond the door
There's peace I'm sure.
And I know there'll be no more
Tears in heaven
~ Eric Clapton and Will Jennings, Tears in Heaven lyrics, written after his son died

Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?
~ Thornton Wilder, Emily from Our Town

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark.
At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark.

Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain,
Tho' your dreams be tossed and blown.
Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone,
You'll never walk alone.
~ Rogers & Hammerstein lyrics from Carousel

You have a choice. You can throw in the towel, or you can use it to wipe the sweat off your face.
~ Gatorade

Your mother is always with you....She's the smell of certain foods you remember, flowers you pick, the fragrance of life itself. She's the cool hand on your brow when you're not feeling well....She is the sound of the rain that lulls you to sleep,...she is Christmas morning....She's the place you came from, your first home, and she's the map you follow with every step you take....nothing on earth can separate you - not time, not space...not even death."
~ Unknown

As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods. They kill us for their sport.
~ William Shakespeare, King Lear

The past is never ead. It's not even past.
~ William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

What's past is prologue
~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest

For love is all, and life goes on
In spite of grief and pain,
And deep within my heart I know
That we shall meet again.
~ on a piece of paper picked up on a battlefield during the Normandy invasion in WWII.

Miss me a little but not too long
And not with your head bowed low
Remember the love that once we shared
Miss me - but let me go.

There will come a day, I promise you, when the thought of your son, or daughter, or your wife or your husband, brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye. It will happen. My prayer for you is that day will come sooner than later.
~ Vice President Joseph Biden

Don't look back. You're not going that way.

Whate'er thy joys, they vanish with the day:
Whate'er thy griefs, in sleep they fade away,
To sleep! to sleep!
Sleep, mournful heart, and let the past be past:
Sleep, happy soul, all life will sleep at last.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

When you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out — because that's what's inside. When you are squeezed, what comes out is what is inside.
~ Dr. Wayne Dyer

I have no business to feel downcast or querulous merely because when so much as been given me I have not had even more.
~ Theodore Roosevelt

...where the dead go in our imaginations: They continue to live with us in the moments when we are sad and terrified. They cheer for us. They give us strength and the courage we lack to carry on...They lead us where we need to be, to experience the joy and capability that was them. They who have been with us in life manage to teach us how and where in death we can listen for them and find their voices and essence again.
~ Anakana Schofield

The tragedy of life is not death, but what we let die inside us while we live.
~ Norman Cousins

Treasure the memories that comfort you, and explore those that may trouble you. Even difficult memories can help us to heal. Share memories with those who listen well and support you. Recognize that your memories may make you laugh or cry. In either case, they are a lasting part of the relationship you had with your spouse.
~ The Lluminari Experts

To say goodbye is not to develop amnesia
~ Jim Noel

His wounded people, still hungry for answers, stumble after him,
with the lameness that comes from a foot in the grave.
~ Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking

Talking about our problems is our greatest addiction. Break the habit. Talk about your joys.
~ Rita Schiano

A Little Farther Down the Road

I know those tears you're crying.
I've been in your shoes.
You feel like there's no use trying.
Like there's nothing left to lose.
You take one step forward,
Move two steps back.
You may not see it now
But it won't always be like that.

A little farther down the road,
You'll see the sun again.
A little farther down the road,
You'll look back at where you've been.
You'll see how far you've come
And you'll find the strength to go
A little farther down the road.
....
~ by Alan Pederson, in memory of his daughter, Ashley Marie Pedersen

At my funeral, I'd like there to be a pinata so that people can be happy.
But filled with bees so they're not too happy.
~ poster

The light has gone out of my life.
~ diary entry by Theodore Roosevelt, after his young wife died suddenly.

I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.
~Maya Angelou

The writer in me loathed the euphemism “pass away,” but the people-pleaser knew to keep things at a gauzy remove.
~ Meghan Daum, NYT,I Nearly Died. So What?

Heartbreak is an invisible affliction. No limp comes with it, no evident scar. No sticker is issued that guarantees good parking or easy access. The heart is broken all the same.
~ Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking

You embrace the suck, you move the f*ck forward.
~ Kim Baker, from the movie Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Death is hideous, and ugly, and grotesque, and wildly, wildly unfair. Or, maybe, death is beautiful and spiritual, and transcendent, and sometimes a very necessary and very freeing escape from our physical bodies when they are no longer habitable.
~ Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist

Such a tapestry of memories we weave throughout our lives - even when there is unevenness, variations, or faults within the weaving process --the result is still beautiful.
~ Linda K Peterson

When you are dead, you don't know that you are dead. It is difficult only for others.
It is the same when you are stupid.
~ Anonymous

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.
~ Steve Jobs

When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.
~ Tecumseh

Either we have hope within us or we don't
It is a dimension of the soul, and is not essentially
dependent on some particular observation of the World
or observation of the situation. Hope is not prognostication.
It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart
~ Vaclav Havel

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.
~ George Carlin

When your parents die, it is said you lose your past; when your spouse dies, you lose your present; and when your child dies, you lose your future. However, when your sibling dies, you lose a part of your past, your present, and your future.
~ Compassionate Friends, Adults grieving loss of a sibling

Grief is like manure, if you spread it out it fertilizes, if you leave it in a big pile it smells like crap.
~ Tom Golden, Men, Grief and Ritual

This is a long journey we are on, and we must go through.  We can't go around, under, or over. 
~ Linda Boravicka

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.
~ Joseph Campbell

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm’d both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.
~ Dying speech of an old Philosopher, Walter Savage Landor

Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.
~ Ashleigh Brilliant

I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.
~ Marcus Cole , "Babylon 5 "

real loss ... only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself
~ Good Will Hunting, line by Robin Williams (Sean)

You're still a part of everything I do
You're on my heart just like a tattoo
Just like a tattoo, I'll always have you
~ Lyrics to Tattoo, by Jordin Sparks

Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous—indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.
~ Richard Dawkins

Faith sees best in the dark.
~ Kirkegaard

As long as you survive you have an obligation to strive
and you're not dead until you see the face of God.

I marvel at the ability of people to absorb hurt and just get back up, and most of them do it with an incredible sense of empathy....
~ Joe Biden

Most people think life sucks, and then you die. Not me. I beg to differ. I think life sucks, then you get cancer, then your dog dies, your wife leaves you, the cancer goes into remission, you get a new dog, you get remarried, you owe ten million dollars in medical bills but you work hard for thirty-five years and you pay it back and then — one day — you have a massive stroke, your whole right side is paralyzed, you have to limp along the streets and speak out of the left side of your mouth and drool but you go into rehabilitation and regain the power to walk and the power to talk and then — one day — you step off a curb at Sixty-seventh Street, and BANG you get hit by a city bus and then you die. Maybe.
~ Denis Leary

We are born in a lottery, and we perish in one.
~ Kevin Myers, "The Irish Times"

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me the most strange that men should fear seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.
~ William Shakespeare, "Julius Ceasar"

All the things get done and you regret them and then you accept them because there's nothing else to do. Regret doesn't budge things; it seems crazy that the force of all that human want can't amend a moment, can't budge a pebble.
~ Darin Strauss, Half a Life: A Memoir

Dying is the one thing - perhaps the only thing - in life that you don't have to do. Stick around for long enough, and it will be done for you.
~ Edwin Shneidman

Death has this much to be said for it.
You don't have to get out of bed for it.
Wherever you happen to be,
They bring it to you to you - free.
~ Kingsley Amis

People talk about the horrors of war, but what weapon has a man invented that even approaches in cruelty some of the commoner diseases? 'Natural' death, almost by definition, means something slow, smelly and painful.
~ George Orwell, "How The Poor Die"

Do not go gentle into that good night... 
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
~- Dylan Thomas

Part of our grief may be for things done or left undone; words said or words never said
~ from the eulogy in "In My Father's Den"

Death is delightful. Death is dawn, The waking from a weary night of fevers unto truth and light. 
~ James Russell Lowell

A face has vanished from our midst;
A voice we loved is stilled
A place is vacant in our hearts
That never can be filled.
~ Original source unknown, several variations exist

Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means life itself has become one.
~ Theodore Roosevelt

Every man dies, not every man really lives.
~ William Wallace, "Braveheart"

You must make a choice to take a chance or your life will never change.
~ Author unknown

Cherish every person in your life, because you never know when it will be the last time you see someone.
~ Author unknown

To suppress the grief, the pain, is to condemn oneself to a living death. Living fully means feeling fully; it means becoming completely one with what you are experiencing and not holding it at arm's length.
~ Philip Kapleau, The Wheel of Life and Death

Don't cry because it's over.
Smile because it happened.
~ Dr. Seuss

Sometimes the thing you most want doesn't happen.
And sometimes the thing you never expect to happen does.
- Love & Other Drugs

And I will light a candle for you.
To shatter all the darkness and bless the times we knew.
Like a beacon in the night,
the flame will burn bright
and guide us on our way.

Oh, today I will light a candle for you.
The seasons come and go,
and I'm weary of the change.
I keep moving on,
you know it's not the same

And when I'm walking all alone,
do you hear me call your name?
Do you hear me sing the songs we used to sing?

You filled my life with wonder;
touched me with surprise,
I always saw that something special deep within your eyes.
And through the good times and the bad,
we carried on with pride.
I hold on to the love and life we knew.
- Paul Alexander

Often, it is through
the most difficult days of our lives
that we come to know ourselves
and what is truly important to us.
No matter how sad you may feel at times, be confident that hope will
awaken with you tomorrow.

Faith and courage reach out to you;
take hold of them, and you will find
that you will be able to smile again
and truly be happy once more.

How we deal with life
is really a matter of personal choice,
so choose to be happy.
Find joy in the simplest things,
and see beauty in each person you meet.
When times are difficult,
remind yourself that no pain
comes to you without a purpose....
~ Author?

Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful that it happens in that order.
~ David Gerrold

Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.
~ Robert Brault

The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.
~ Flora Whittemore

One day at a time--this is enough. Do not look back and grieve over the past for it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful it will be worth remembering.
~ Author unknown

You know what it's hard to be happy? It's because we refuse to LET GO of the things that make us sad.
~ Lupytha Hermin

If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.
~ Lao Tzu

Never lose hope. You can't know what tomorrow may bring.
~ Author unknown

I myself have often longed for some structure and theory that would compartmentalize or chart my pain. But, there is no single story or timetable or passageway through sorrow.
~ Helen Vozenilek, Loss of the Ground-Note

If there is a gift for us in exchange for our losses, it is a new, constant state of cherishing.
~ Stephanie Ericsson, Companion Through Darkness

The death of a beloved is an amputation.
~ Madeleine L'Engle

It is alright to wallow in one's journal; it is a way of getting rid of self-pity and self-indulgence and self-centeredness. What we work out in journals we don't take out on family and friends.
~ Madeleine L'Engle

It seems cruel that...she died and left him alone in a place that her presence in his life had created for him.
~ Douglas H. Gresham

Life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
~ Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference in your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. .... Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well.
~ Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918), also The Shell Seekers

I'm not going to tell you to forget it...but the past is the past.
~ from the TV series Fringe

When he died, he took the best of me with him, and I kept the best of him with me. I carry him around with me in the pocket of my heart.
~ Kris Tompkins

A quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business.
~ A.A. Milne

From a collection of Famous Last Words by Claire Cock-Starkey

• Last words are for fools who haven't said enough. ~ Karl Marx
• All my possessions for one moment of time. ~ Elizabeth I
• I must ask to be excused, as I have to die. ~ RSVP from Goethe's mother
• I have led a happy life. ~ essayist William Hazlitt
• The dream has been short, but it has been beautiful. ~ French general Maurice de Saxe

Each death and departure comes to us as a surprise, a sorrow never anticipated.
Life is a long series of farewells; only the circumstances should surprise us.
~ Jessamyn West, The Life I Really Lived

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