All Quotes By Tag: Grief

“It’s like Romeo & Juliet,’ I say. ‘You can’t separate them. Otherwise, there would be no Shakespeare.’ Silence. I decide to be more straightforward. I tell him, ‘Nothing frightens me anymore. I am not even afraid to die.’ Bussey’s eyes, already wide open, grow even wider. My death is the last thing he needs. I have the strange feeling that there are two of me. One observes the conversation while the other does the talking. Everything is abnormal, especially this extreme calm that has taken me over. I try to explain to Bussey that if I decide to die, it will be without bitterness. I know I did everything I possibly could, so it will be respectful farewell. I will bow to life like an actor, who, having delivered his lines, bends deeply to his audience & retires. I tell Bussey that this decision has nothing to do with him, that it is entirely mine. I will choose either to live or to die, but I cannot allow myself to live in the in-between. I do not want to go through life like a ghost. ‘Do you think you’ll find Danny this way?’ Bussey asks. My mind sifts through all available theories on the afterlife. It is as if this metaphysical question has become as real as the air we breathe. Buddhism teaches that life is an eternal cycle without beginning or end. I recall the metaphor: “Our individual lives are like waves produced from the great ocean that is the universe. The emergence of a wave is life, and its abatement is death. This rhythm repeats eternally.” Finally I answer Bussey, ‘No, I don’t think so.’ Bussey seems relieved, but I’m more panicky, because I had never thought that I could wind up alone. In my mind, whatever the odds, Danny & I were & would be together forever.”

“As she cried, I could feel growing there, as had once before, a presence between us: the tiny perfect form of Sherry nestled between her parents’ bodies. Our bodies were shaped by her absence, by the almost unbearable weight of her loss.”

“No one is adequate to comprehending the misery of my lot! Fate obliges me to be constantly in movement: I am not permitted to pass more than a fortnight in the same place. I have no Friend in the world, and from the restlessness of my destiny I never can acquire one. Fain would I lay down my miserable life, for I envy those who enjoy the quiet of the Grave: But Death eludes me, and flies from my embrace. In vain do I throw myself in the way of danger. I plunge into the Ocean; The Waves throw me back with abhorrence upon the shore: I rush into fire; The flames recoil at my approach: I oppose myself to the fury of Banditti; Their swords become blunted, and break against my breast: The hungry Tiger shudders at my approach, and the Alligator flies from a Monster more horrible than itself. God has set his seal upon me, and all his Creatures respect this fatal mark!”

“Oh dire, dreadful death, you drag your heels.Why dawdle and draw back? You drown my heart.”

“There is nothing more painful than the untimely death of someone young and dear to the heart. The harrowing grief surges from a bottomless well of sorrow, drowning the mourner in a torrent of agonizing pain; an exquisite pain that continues to afflict the mourner with heartache and loneliness long after the deceased is buried and gone.”

“I wonder if my first breath was as soul-stirring to my mother as her last breath was to me”

“And when I stand in the receiving linelike Jackie Kennedywithout the pillbox hat,if Jackie were fat and had taken enough Klonopinto still an ox,and you whisperI think of youevery day,don’t finish withbecause I’ve been going to Weight Watcherson Tuesdays and wonder if you want to go too.”

“And this evening when I close my eyes against the darkness and think about her, I’ll imagine iridescent wings fluttering, if only for a moment, against cloudless blue skies.”

“Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back — to be sucked back — into it?”

“If there is nothing else there is this: to be inundated, consumed.”

“The beauty of the sea is that it never shows any weakness and never tires of the countless souls that unleash their broken voices into its secret depths.”

“Psychologists have clinically observed that overly prolonged grief in the bereaved usually signifies a poor relationship with the one who died.”

“I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother–her incomparable mother!–five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich! . . . Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night–and it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit here–writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How dazzling the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery. Seventy-four years ago twenty-four days. Seventy-four years old yesterday. Who can estimate my age today?”

“The day she was born,her grandfather made her a ring of silver and a polished stone, because he loved her already.”

“In this quiet place on a quiet streetwhere no one ever finds usgently, lovingly, freedom gives back our pain.–from poem In a Quiet Place on a Quiet Street”