“The idea of immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear, beating against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow – Hope shining upon the tears of grief.”

“But that’s just it; I can either focus on what I have lost, or what I have gained, and I choose the latter.”

“The bird is gone, and in what meadow does it now sing?”

“We have such numerous interests in our lives that it is not uncommon, on a single occasion, for the foundations of a happiness that does not yet exist to be laid down alongside the intensification of a grief from which we are still suffering.”

“He wipes tears off my face and then snot. He uses his hands. He loves me that much.”

“Heaven is a place where all the dogs you’ve ever loved come to greet you.”

“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.But no, that is not quite accurate. There is one place where her absence comes locally home to me, and it is a place I can’t avoid. I mean my own body. It had such a different importance while it was the body of H.’s lover. Now it’s like an empty house.”

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

“Oh Julie, wouldn’t I know if you were dead? Wouldn’t I feel it happening, like a jolt of electricity to my heart?”

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

“Grief is love turned into an eternal missing”

“Music, When Soft Voices DieMusic, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heap’d for the belovèd’s bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on.”

“I remember being scared that something must, surely, go wrong, if we were this happy, her and me, in the early days, when our love was settling into the shape of our lives like cake mixture reaching the corners of the tin as it swells and bakes.”

“Not only had my brother disappeared, but–and bear with me here–a part of my very being had gone with him. Stories about us could, from them on, be told from only one perspective. Memories could be told but not shared.”

“When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.”