1. The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with – nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they add up to the story of a life.
2. To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die
3. When I think of death, and of late the idea has come with alarming frequency, I seem at peace with the idea that a day will dawn when I will no longer be among those living in this valley of strange humors.
I can accept the idea of my own demise, but I am unable to accept the death of anyone else.
I find it impossible to let a friend or relative go into that country of no return.
Disbelief becomes my close companion, and anger follows in its wake.
I answer the heroic question ‘Death, where is thy sting? ‘ with ‘ it is here in my heart and mind and memories
4. At the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of summer we remember them
5. Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?
6. All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on
7. God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December
8. 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.
9. There are no happy endings. Endings are the saddest part, So just give me a happy middle And a very happy start.
10. Should you shield the valleys from the windstorms, you would never see the beauty of their canyons.
11. Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone.
12. On this bald hill the new year hones its edge. faceless and pale s china the round sky goes on minding its business. Your absense is inconspicuous, nobody can tell what I lack.
13. Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. … Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.
14. When we have joy we crave to share; We remember them.
15. Make the most of your regrets; Never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it til it comes to have a separate and integral interest. to regret deeply is to live afresh.
16. Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.
17. Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.
18. They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite.
19. No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.
20. You gave me a forever within the numbered days.
21. 14 years.
My longest relationship
My only experience of maternal love
My constant companion
My best friend Duck
22. Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night I miss you like hell.
23. Look closely and you will see almost everyone carrying bags of cement on their shoulders. That’s why it takes courage to get out of bed in the morning and climb into the day.
24. Losing my mother at such an early age is the scar of my soul. But I feel like it ultimatelt made me into the person I am today. I understand the journey of life. I had to go through what I did to be here.
25. My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.
26. No one ever told me that grief felt so life fear.
27. Ain’t no shame in holding on to grief… as long as you make room for other things too.
28. She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it sharer in her thoughts.
29. The holiest of holidays are those kept by ourselves in silence and apart; The secret anniversaries of the heart.
30. When a child dies, you bury the child in your heart.
31. It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down tress
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on
32. Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering it will be happier.
33. The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
34. She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.
35. In times of grief and sorrow I will hold you and rock you and take your grief and make it my own. When you cry I cry and when you hurt I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods to tears and despair and make it through the potholed street of life.
36. So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.
37. Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you.
38. To weep is to make less the depth of grief.
39. Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.
40. It takes strength to make your way through grief, to grab hold of life and let it pull you forward.
41. The healing power of even the most microscopic exchange with someone who knows in a flash precisely what you’re talking about because she experienced that thing too cannot be overestimated.
42. And I can’t be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.
43. We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accept it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.
44. Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.
45. I saw the world in black and white instead of the vibrant colours and shades I knew existed.
46. Words are like nets – we hope they’ll cover what we mean, but we know they can’t possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.
47. Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can’t even cry.
48. I just looked at her, feeling utterly empty. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say to her. My life is in that bed. Please let me stay.
49. The song is ended, but the melody lingers on.
50. When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the fae of heaven so fine, that all the world will be in love with night, and pay no worship to the garish sun.
51. The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?
52. Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.
53. Love is really the only thing we can possess, keep with us, and take with us.
54. An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.
55. Death ends a life, not a relationship.
56. But there was no need to be ashmed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.
57. They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies.
58. Life has to end. Love doesn’t.
59. And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.
60. What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes part of us.
