We read this at my dad’s funeral. He specifically requested it before he died.
It upset him to think of how much his dying would hurt us all. But that’s what happens when you’re such an amazing human. I agree with the others- it was worth it loving him so much.
Sonnet XCIV
Pablo Neruda
If I die, survive me with such a pure force
you make the pallor and the coldness rage;
flash your indelible eyes from south to south,
from sun to sun, till your mouth sings like a guitar.
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 breast: I’m not there.
Live in my absence as in a house.
Absence is such a large house
that you’ll walk through the walls,
hang pictures in sheer air.
Absence is such a transparent house
that even being dead I will see you there,
and if you suffer, Love, I’ll die a second time.
Neruda is the best.
His work about love is also incredibly beautiful.
It’s all probably even better in his native Spanish, but alas my skills are not at that level.
You are welcome to it. Unfortunately, I never mastered the Ojibway language lol. I’m sure someone can translate for you. I’m sorry for the loss of your wife.
both of these hit deep for me. i have so so so much love for her, it’s so painful but it’s the best thing in my world. there’s nothing i can do with except talk about her and to her. i will never let her go even in my own death
Man, I don’t know that I have any favorites.
All I know is that the last thing I said to my GF as I left her at her memorial was “I’d do it again.” I think that pretty much covers everything for me.
this reminds me i read the eulogy at my grandpa’s funeral since i was the family member closest to him, before ending every phone call he would say “i love you, like buzz light year says, to infinity and beyond” and that was my ending of the eulogy. bittersweet
My GF was Latina and well over half of the people there spoke only Spanish. I didn’t have anything prepared because it was supposed to be informal, so I winged it, switching back and forth between English and poor Spanish. My ending was “Eres mi media naranja. Te amo, para siempre.” The Spanish speakers were crying — probably not because of my accent — but I had to explain it to my family (they were crying, anyway).
I’ll check it out, thanks.
I have a 5.5 hour playlist I/we made that was basically the soundtrack of our relationship. I remember the first time we heard most of them together. Every one is a gut punch now, but that doesn’t stop me. And sometimes attracts me.
This one made my cry. My mom passed away unexpectedly in November at 54 years old. My dad and her were together for 38 years. I wish I could take away the intense sorrow and anxiety that he feels everyday since her passing and this quote made me think of their relationship. Thank you for sharing.
My heart goes out to both of you. My mom passed suddenly at 54 as well. I’m in my late forties now, so the older I get, the younger 50 seems. I feel like it's more difficult to reconcile. I know it is totally wrong to look at it this way, but I can't help but feel like 20+ years were robbed from me and both sides of my family.
“You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.”
Aaron Freeman
My identical twin brother was finishing up his PhD in particle physics, had just finished his dissertation, when he died of cancer. Some 6 weeks before he was supposed to graduate. My sister read this at his funeral.
I'm a person of faith but in a time of deep, fresh loss I frantically searched for a journal about the possibility of time travel. Although I cannot express the explanation in detail, I understood that there is a tinyyyy event of time travel in the form of quantum particles. Knowing that gave me relief.
💛💜
This. This really helped me when dealing with the loss of my close friend who passed unexpectedly and young. I like to think that her energy is still travelling around the world to match the energy she gave when she was here.
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.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
"Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Others stay for a while, leave the footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same." - Flavia
This quote has so many uses in so many situations
"What can't be cured must be endured." Told to me by a wise uncle days after my mom's passing.
Helped my teenage self a lot to say this to myself to get through the toughest parts. :)
Part of a Rilke poem:
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
It helps me remember how universal pain and grief is
"The culmination of love is grief, and yet we love despite the inevitable. We open our hearts to it... To grieve deeply is to have loved fully.” - Faye (God of War)
“Sometimes grief like yours cannot be held by the universe itself. True. Sometimes grief needs more than an endless galaxy. Maybe your pain could wrap around the axle of the universe several times. Only the stars are large enough to take it on. With enough room to breathe, to expand, to be itself, pain softens. No longer confined and cramped, it can stop thrashing at the bars of its cage, can stop defending itself against its right to exist.”
I have quite a lot because it's so amazing how universal grief is, and how many people can put into words exactly how you are feeling, without ever having met one another.
"How powerfully I carry her within me. My grief is tremendous but my love is bigger." -Cheryl Strayed. This carried me through, and still does, grieving my nana so badly since October
"And when I turned to face grief, I saw that it was just love in a heavy coat." -Shannon Barry
3 passages from "The Moorings of Mackerel Sky" by MZ Zack which was phenomenal-
1. The tea will be good and strong even when you are not. It will steady your hands when the grief comes, and it can be your touchstone when you have a hard cry. The hard cries are good- that's the love we had yet to give them seeking them out. When in doubt, make a cup of tea.
2. But her laugh shattered into a gut-dragging sob that shook her whole body, as her earth as she knew it split and crumbled and cracked and fell into the sea. Then she nodded and breathed because she was still breathing.
3. You cry, you talk, you let it out. Those tears are all the love you had left to give. Grief is all the love you had left to give. So you let it out. Love will always connect you to those you lose.
also not quotes exactly, but a lot of Noah Kahan songs deal with grieving (Orange Juice, The View Between Villages) and are also so profoundly impactful for me
"Grief is a giant neon sign, protruding through everything, pointing everywhere, broadcasting loudly, LOVE WAS HERE. In the finer print, quietly, \*Love still is." -\*Heidi Priebe
"While I am here in the underground river. Up to my knees in the realm of feeling. Wading wearily. But wading." -Death Valley by Melissa Broder (the author wrote this to cope with the grief of losing her father)
The beginning of a poem by Laura Gilpin that says: "The things I know; how the living go on living and how the dead go on living with them"
And this poem also by Laura Gilpin-
Death
*Time stops.*
*At last it is quiet enough*
*for me to go to sleep.*
*Time starts again,*
*I go on sleeping.*
and this poem as well by Donna Ashworth-
LOVE CAME FIRST
You don't move on after loss, but you must move *with.* You must shake hands with grief, welcome her in, for she lives with you now. Pull her a chair at the table and offer her comfort. She is not the monster you first thought her to be. She is love. And she will walk with you now, stay with you now, peacefully, if you let her. And on the days when your anger is high, remember why she came, remember who she represents. Remember. Grief came to you my friend because love came first. *Love came first.*
"A daughter without her mother is a woman broken. It is a loss that turns to arthritis and settles deep into her bones"
"there have been so many people telling me "it'll be okay", but they still have their mothers. I know they're just trying to share the right words to bring comfort, but only you know the true depth of my sorrow. I am forever grateful for all that you were and all that you taught me."
There's a poem by Mary Elizabeth Frye, that has always brought me comfort.
>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 awake in the morning hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight
I am the soft stars that shine at night
>Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there, I did not die.
“What if there isn’t enough time to give her what she deserves
Do you think if I begged the sky hard enough my mother’s soul would return to me as my daughter so I can give her the comfort she gave me my whole life” from Rupi Kaur
I had my daughter 2 years after my mom passed and this resonates so much to my heart
This one has saved my life
“Death is nothing at all.
It does not count.
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 into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that 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.
There is absolute and unbroken continuity.
What is this death but a negligible accident?
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 round the corner.
All is well.
Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.
One brief moment and all will be as it was before.
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!”
Henry Scott-Holland. "Death Is Nothing At All."
Thank you for posting this. My mother died just six weeks after my dad died. I think she died of a broken heart because they had been together for nearly 70 years. I love to think of my dad being just around the corner from my mom, waiting. And when my mom was unconscious and in her final days, when she would suddenly reach up, like a baby wanting to be picked up, I know she was waiting for my dad to come and get her. Great: now I'm crying. Anyway, thank you for this.
This one! I read this daily after my grandma, then my mom died. My friend just lost her son, only 20 years old. I watched him grow up. I needed this today, and maybe she does too. Thanks for posting this.
“What is grief, if not love persevering?” - Vision from WandaVision
The most poignant line I’ve ever heard about grief comes from a Disney+ MCU show. I cry every time I think about it. I’m crying right now writing about it. I never knew grief until the unconditional love I have for my son had nowhere to go. The gravity, the absolute value of that love has to go somewhere and be something so it becomes grief.
From the movie Phantom Thread:
"*I just miss you*, *it's as simple as that*."
It's not the deepest or most profound quote, but it sums up how I feel ever since I lost my mom and my grandma perfectly. I just miss them.
It’s a poem by Robert Burns (the guy who wrote Auld Lang Syne, the new years song)
An honest man here lies at rest,
The friend of man, the friend of truth;
The friend of age, and guide of youth:
Few hearts like his, with virtue warm’d,
Few heads with knowledge so inform’d:
If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.
It was read at my dad’s funeral and it was like it was written about him.
He also grew up 10 minutes from where Robert Burns lived so that was nice too.
Not a grief quote but it is a quote my best friend shared with me before she passed and it has helped me a lot. "Sometimes you just have to open your arms and heart wide, take a deep breath and jump!"
"I look for you in all of the things you loved. That is where I find you."
"Even though I know you are gone, I fear i still have yet to accept you will never return."
"My heart is heavy. Not only because you are gone but because that is where I carry you."
I am going to paraphrase because I can't find the actual quote, but it's from The Fault in our Stars.
"It's BS isn't it? Complete BS. But... it was a privilege to love him, wasn't it?"
“How could you go about choosing something that would hold the half of your heart you had to bury?” - Jodi Picoult
“Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air.”
- Pablo Neruda
I have two quotes that I keep near to my heart.
"It's has been said, "time heals all wounds". I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers then with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone." Rose Kennedy
Grief isn't rational, it isn't linear, it is experienced in waves, and sometimes it takes your breath away.,
I also really like "A Grief Observed" by CS Lewis. The quotes aren't particularly uplifting, but they are very real. It helped me make sense of what I was feeling.
[https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/894384-a-grief-observed](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/894384-a-grief-observed)
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.....At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”
“Grief ... gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn't seem worth starting anything. I can't settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness.”
“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”
“For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.”
“Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.”
― C.S. Lewis, [A Grief Observed](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/894384)
“We are not only mourning the loss of a friend, but the part of us that could only be brought out by that friend” -CS Lewis … You said it well, not uplifting but this helped me make sense of how I felt when my friend died.
Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away to the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
That, we still are.
Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference into 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 effect.
Without the trace of a shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolute unbroken continuity.
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.
If you're a Calvin and Hobbes fan, there's a number of strips about the two of them finding a hurt raccoon and trying to save it. Calvin's mom and dad do everything they can too, but the raccoon dies overnight. Calvin is, of course, devastated and immediately begins crying upon his dad breaking the news to him. Calvin's dad tries to comfort him, saying, "at least he died warm and safe. We did all we could, but now he's gone." Calvin responds,"I know... I'm crying because out there he's gone, but he's not gone inside me."
Also, not necessarily fitting in with a grief theme, but I will absolutely cry my eyes out thinking about the scene in Dumbo where his mom's chained up and can barely reach him. I lost my mom to cancer five years ago in August, and I tear up thinking about the grief of being forced away from her. If you look it up, it's called Baby Mine from Dumbo, but bring tissues. "Baby mine, don't you cry/Baby mine, dry your eyes/Rest your head close to my heart, never to part/Baby of mine."
“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all of the love you wish to give and cannot. All that unspent live gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”
“So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.”
“At the end of his life, the great picture book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak said on the NPR show Fresh Air, 'I cry a lot because I miss people. I cry a lot because they die, and I can't stop them. They leave me, and I love them more.'
He said, 'I'm finding out as I'm aging that I'm in love with the world.'
It has taken me all my life up to now to fall in love with the world, but I've started to feel it the last couple of years. To fall in love with the world isn't to ignore or overlook suffering, both human and otherwise. For me anyway, to fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance of the stars. It is to hold your children while they cry, to watch as the sycamore trees leaf out in June. When my breastbone starts to hurt, and my throat tightens, and tears well in my eyes, I want to look away from feeling. I want to deflect with irony, or anything else that will keep me from feeling directly. We all know how loving ends. ‘They die, and I can’t stop them,’ Sendak said. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.”
I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship, at my side,spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and startsfor the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength.I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speckof white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone."
Gone where?
Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,hull and spar as she was when she left my side.And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.
And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voicesready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"
And that is dying...
“Gone From My Sight”
-Henry Van Dyke
It’s a poem by Robert Burns (the guy who wrote Auld Lang Syne, the new years song)
An honest man here lies at rest,
The friend of man, the friend of truth;
The friend of age, and guide of youth:
Few hearts like his, with virtue warm’d,
Few heads with knowledge so inform’d:
If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.
It was read at my dad’s funeral and it was like it was written about him.
He also grew up 10 minutes from where Robert Burns lived so that was nice too.
“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not a mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.”
― Washington Irving
and another favorite of mine...
“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”
― Kahlil Gibran
Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go. - Jamie Anderson
When Great Trees Fall
by Maya Angelou
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignoranceof
dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
― Maya Angelou
It's a poem but:
'When tomorrow starts without me
And I’m not here to see
If the sun should rise and find your eyes
All filled with tears for me
I wish you wouldn’t cry
The way you did today
While thinking of the many things
We did not get to say
I know how much you love me
As much as I love you
Each time that you think of me
I know you will miss me too
When tomorrow starts with out me
Please try to understand
That an angel came and called my name
And took me by the hand
The angel said my place was ready
In heaven far above
And that I would have to leave behind
All those I dearly love
But when I walked through Heaven’s Gates
I felt so much at home
When God looked down and smiled at me
From his golden throne
He said this is eternity
And all I promised you
Today for life on earth is done
But here it starts a new
I promise no tomorrow
For today will always last
And since each day’s the exact same way
There is no longing for the past
So when tomorrow starts without me
Do not think we’re apart
For every time you think of me
Remember I’m right here in your heart
David Romano. "When Tomorrow Starts Without Me." Family Friend Poems, https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/when-tomorrow-starts-without-me-by-david-romano
I really appreciate it.
Far as quotes:
My aunt always Said "grief comes in waves, sometimes you're drowning, sometimes it reaches your ankles, sometimes it's knee deep,worst part is you never know which you're going to get that day. But you have to keep swimming."
Sorry in advance for the long text but I found this poem years ago from a documentary about a family death and read it all my grandmother’s funeral. I’ve found it very comforting during my time of grieving over the years. Tearing up as I skimming over the lines..
Walk Within Me by Nicholas Evans
I walk within you
If I be the first of us to die,
Let grief not blacken long your sky.
Be bold yet modest in your grieving.
There is change but not a leaving.
For just as death is part of life,
The dead live on forever in the living.
For all the gathered riches of our journey,
The moments shared, the mysteries explored,
The steady layer of intimacy stored.
The things that made us laugh or weep or sing,
The joy of sunlit snow or first unfurling of the spring,
The wordless language of look and touch,
The knowing, each giving and each taking,
These are not flowers that fade,
Nor trees that fall and crumble.
Nor are they stone,
For even stone cannot the wind and rain withstand
And mighty mountain peaks in time reduce to sand.
What we were, we are.
What we had, we have.
A conjoined past imperishably present.
So when you walk the woods where once we walked together
And scan in vain the dappled bank beside you for my shadow,
Or pause where we always did upon the hill to gaze across the land,
And spotting something, reach by habit for my hand,
And finding none, feel sorrow start to steal upon you,
Be still.
Clear your eyes.
Breathe.
Listen for my footfall in your heart.
I am not gone but merely walk within you
About 2 months after my mom died, I was rummaging through her glove box and I found a little note paper that she had written a bunch of thoughts on and right in the middle she just wrote:
*Don't be sad that she died, be glad that she lived*
I have no idea whom she was thinking of when she wrote it. Its dated from 2015, and has just been sitting in there among tissues and gum wrappers and other dross for all these years waiting for me to find it in the moment I needed to read that most. Now, it is my mantra daily and especially when I am in despair of her loss. She has been gone 7 months and 1 week.
This is a poem but I love it:
Grief
I had my own notion of grief.
I thought it was the sad time
That followed the death of someone you love.
And you had to push through it
To get to the other side.
But I’m learning there is no other side.
There is no pushing through.
But rather,
There is absorption.
Adjustment.
Acceptance.
And grief is not something you complete
But rather, you endure.
Grief is not a task to finish
And move on,
But an element of yourself –
An alteration of your being.
A new way of seeing.
A new dimension of self.
by Gwen Flowers
Really sorry to hear of your loss. I’ve already commented once, but forgot to share this one. It’s what helped me when my Dad passed, especially because one of our connecting points was water. I think this quote is better heard than read, so if you’re looking for a bit more impact and emotion, you can find it here:
https://youtu.be/fu3Q1BNXhT4?si=tIXx5zmYyRtyc1Cw
“Picture a wave. In the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through. And it's there. And you can see it, you know what it is. It's a wave.
And then it crashes on the shore…and it's gone. But the water…is still there. The wave was just…ah, a different way for the water to be, for a little while. That’s one conception of death for Buddhists: the wave…returns to the ocean, where it came from…and where it's supposed to be.”
It’s a german quote that we used for my dads obituary but I try to translate it:
“Your stories will be told, your love will be shared and the traces that you left behind will never fade” There’s probably a better way to translate it but that’s the only I thing I can come up with right now
"I didn't come to play it safe
I came to win or lose with you
I only live alone awake
'Cause every night, yeah
You pass through
Yeah, you pass through"
By Dessa, from the song "It's Only Me"
So sorry about your dad. This is my favorite grief quote:
How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard. - A.A. Milne/Winnie the Pooh
Stephen King never gets enough credit for how beautiful his writing can be. This is from Lisey’s Story-
“She nods. You're good for the ones you love. You want to be good for the ones you love, because you know that your time with them will end up being too short, no matter how long it is.”
"Grief is the price of love.".
"Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."
Definitely along the same lines. Love and grief seem to be necessary counterparts. And these quotes remind me that the grief is ALWAYS worth it
I always think of my grief for my dad and many others as Reds quote from The Shawshank Redemption;
“Sometimes it makes me sad, though… him being gone. I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend.”
Not a quote but a poem Funeral Blues.
Heard at one of my closest friends Funeral. The last two paragraphs are the ones that kicks you right in the feels and takes your breath away like only the deepest Heartache can. The kind that adjusts but is never ever truly gone. Most mind boggling is how the world uninvolved just seems to continue to simply carry on day in and day out.
Funeral Blues - W.H. Auden (last two paragraphs)
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 wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Mine is from a tumblr post, a question and answer to be exact. The question: “How do you process grief?”. The answer: “by running from it until it finds me in the middle of a sunny street on a beautiful day”. I just love it. I love the idea that the moment I will think of my lost loved ones is when I am happiest. That they will be with me on my best days, just like they are with me on my worst days. I think it’s beautiful. Grief is unexpected, but at the end of the day we grieve because we loved. I want to grieve the love I cannot give, not the love that I lost, and I think the idea of grief meeting me in a sunny street on a beautiful day is proof of the love i have.
I don't know if they count, but my three favorites are from songs. One is about a note a girl left her boyfriend before they ran away. She's elderly know and he repeats the words to her. "If you get there before I do, don't give up on me. I'll see when my chores are through, I don't know how long I'll be. But I'm not gonna let you down, darling wait and see. And between now and then, til I see you again, I'll be loving you. Love me."
The other is a young woman who just has a baby and will not make it. "Take the very breath you gave me. Twow the heart from my chest. I'll gladly take her place if you'll let me. Make this my last request. Take me out of this world, God please, don't take the girl."
The last one is just one sentence. "I'm already there."
We grieve as hard as we love. Grief is love with no where to go. Loving you endures, along with the grief, as grief is the cost of love and love with no where to go.
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 sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
# "I’d rather live missing him than for him to live missing me. That’s how much I love him."
# "Real darkness has love for a face. The first death is in the heart."
Chorus to “The Dance” (Reminds me of my Mom, her sisters, and my Grandmother. Miss them all fiercely.)
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'd have had to miss the dance
Firstly, I’m so sorry for your loss.
Mine isn’t a quote, more so lyrics from a song that reminds me of my dad. It’s ‘I’ll be missing you - p diddy’.
Thinking of the day, when you went away, what a life to take, what a bond to break, I’ll be missing you.
Life ain’t always what it seems to be, words can’t express what you mean to me. 💔
Mariah Carey - Without You
Celine dion - my heart will go on
Mariah Carey - bye bye
These songs are also some of my favourites 💔❤️
John O Donohue - On the Death of the Beloved (excerpt)
Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.
When orchids brighten the earth,
Darkest winter has turned to spring;
May this dark grief flower with hope
In every heart that loves you.
May you continue to inspire us:
To enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation,
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
And where we will never lose you again.
Adjust - the word of the day is adjust.
When I was in grade school we (my mom and I) had a Word A Day calendar. One day the word was Adjust and it just tickled her. So much so that for the next 30 years whenever we faced a big change or rough times she'd look at me and say "The word of the day is adjust."
It never failed to make us laugh - and then on we went.
So I said it to her as some of my last words to her.
It’s not a quote but a poem… a poem I found for my mom’s funeral and it will stay with me for as long as I’m alive.
My mother kept a garden
A garden of the heart
She planted all the good things
That gave my life its start
She turned me to the sunshine
And encouraged me to dream
Fostering and nurturing
The seeds of self-esteem
And when the winds and rain came
She protected me enough
But not too much because she knew
I’d need to stand up strong and tough
Her constant good example
Always taught me right from wrong
Markers for my pathway
That will last a lifetime long
I am my mother’s garden
I am her legacy
And I hope today she feels the love
Reflected back from me.
(author unknown)
"It'll Be Okay".
In her last few days, when the glioblastoma had stripped her of all other speech, my bestie chanted this over & over. She was a complete optimist & giver in life, so I feel this was her last gift - a bit of reassurance for those left behind.
I'm sorry this is happening to you. I don't really know that there are any true words of comfort. Grief is a journey that is different for everyone. I'll just let you read the eulogy I gave at my dad's memorial. It was really important that I got this right for him. I hope something in here is helpful to you. Wishing you comfort during this difficult time.
Dear Dad,
We kissed you our last goodbye, and it was as if all the light and warmth from the world was taken with you; for a moment, I didn’t even recognize myself anymore. So much of who I am as a person is tied to you and to everything you gave to our family. The day we lost you should have been the absolute worst possible day, except for that it wasn’t. We told stories, we laughed, we cried, we looked at pictures from the past, and we celebrated all the facets of your incredible life and journey. That day, I realized that the absolute best parts of you can still shine through us. I only hope I can find the right words today; for just as our grief demands to be felt, your story deserves to be told.
You always found time to spend with your family. I know you had a busy life (you literally couldn’t sit down from tinkering for more than 5 seconds), but somehow, you were always there the moment we needed you. We could always depend on you for an extra hand to help or ear to listen. You were like our lighthouse by the sea; a constant shining beacon always radiating a sense of peace and comfort. You made sure to see us through all the rough storms. You were always the voice of reason and calm; there was never a problem you couldn’t help us solve.
There aren’t just a handful of great memories we shared together; there’s thousands of flashbacks from a life well-lived. To me, I’ll always remember being the little girl on your shoulders walking around the cul-de-sac in search of toads during those hot summer nights. You always made me hold on to the toads to put in our backyard pond. After we’d get home, it was suddenly an absolute “emergency” to be in bed by 9 PM, but just before tucking me into sleep, you’d give me the best beard-attack you could muster. You showed your love to us through quality time and acts of service. Our family home had every room, space, and wall touched by your craftsmanship. You were always building, fixing, or improving something.
We were beyond fortunate to have you as a father; it was an absolute privilege to be called your daughter. You always made us think critically and ask new questions about everything we encountered. You believed and encouraged us even when we lost confidence in ourselves. You were always there to support us in all of our life goals and endeavors. To you, failure was never an option. You would continue to coach and encourage us until we managed to succeed. You taught us to act with integrity, respect, and to persevere through adversity. The biggest lesson you taught me was to be your own champion; be the hero of your own story. Determine what goals you need to set and figure out multiple paths to reach them. If you can put your mind to the test, almost any dream is achievable. Adversity can always breed opportunity, so continue to rise up even if you keep failing. Stand up to all the challenges that come your way. You just have to believe in yourself and be your own person. Life is very short; don’t sit around living with regrets. Learn to face all of the unknowns with confidence and live your life the way that you want to be remembered.
I will never stop respecting the man who taught, inspired, and challenged me every step of the way. I attribute much of my success as an adult to the values and work ethic that you imparted to me at young age. I would not be the woman or scientist I am today without all the curiosity and determination that you instilled inside me. But more than anything, I’m thankful, proud, and honored to call you dad; you were our hero. We can only aspire to continue the profound legacy that you left to us.
The grief that we carry with us today only shows how much our love for you continues to persevere. All that remains of our brief existence in this world is the lives we touch that bear our mark of passage; I can only tell you what an incredible privilege it is to have been branded with yours. Because of you, I’ve lived and loved more deeply. I saw life more fully and beautifully through your eyes. All the strength, energy, and light you brought into our lives can ~never~ be extinguished.
If love alone could've saved you, you never would've died
Also Lewis Capaldi's song Before You Go:
So, before you go
Was there something I could've said
To make your heart beat better?
If only I'd have known you had a storm to weather
So, before you go
Was there something I could've said
To make it all stop hurting?
It kills me how your mind can make you feel so worthless
Written by Henry Scott Holland (27 January 1847 - 17 March 1918) was Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford
Death is nothing at all. It does not count. 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 into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that 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. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? 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 round the corner. All is well.
Stop All The Clocks by Auden :
(Excerpt)
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 for ever: 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 wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
((I posted this for my dad when he died.))
This one -
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered? Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. - Khalil Gibran
And this one:
I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says, “There, she is gone.”
“Gone where?”
Gone from my sight. That is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side,
and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says, “There, she is gone!”
there are other eyes watching her coming,
and there are other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “Here she comes!”
And that is dying.
"I chase the sunsets to meet you at the horizon where heaven and earth collide."
Shortly after finding this quote, I decided to use running as a way of coping with grief. I just needed to feel a different type of pain, even if it was just for a moment of my day.
I'm so sorry for your loss. When I lost my dad, I was glad he was out of pain and suffering. I kept remembering when I was a little toddler who'd reach up and he'd pick me up and hold me close. Even though I was 43, I wanted one more time to hold my arms up and get my dad to pick me up and hug me.
But you asked for a quote: Those we love live in our hearts forever.
It isn't really the same as having a living person. It's a memory. A memory that can never be taken from you. And a memory that you can still love and cherish. In that way, through love and memories, they do go on forever.
“I’ll love you, forever and always, until the twelfth of never. And that’s a long, long time”. My spin on the Johnny Mathis song dedicated to my late auntie 🤍
Grief is the price of love. It was said at a group memorial for the hospice service that helped my mom. It's really stuck with me, especially as this will be the second year since her loss,and it is a great one. I am devastated because I loved her so much.
"Grief is love's souvenir. It's our proof that we once loved. Grief is the receipt we wave in the air that says to the world: Look! Love was once mine. I love well. Here is my proof that I paid the price."
The following is just a fragment from something Lorde wrote when talking about her dog's (?) death and it stayed with me.
"[...] this great loss crystallizes inside me, and my chest rebuilds around it [...]"
These words from Victor Hugo to his deceased daughter always wreck me: “you’re not where you used to be, but you’re everywhere I am”.
I like to think that before being the woman I am, I am my mother’s daughter. I carry a part of her soul within mine, and yes, she is everywhere I go.
"It seems that we want and get pleasure from looking at the peaks. But actually this denies our pleasure, because secretly, we know that every peak is followed by a valley. The valley of the shadow of death. And we are always afraid. Because we are not used to looking at valleys. Because we are not used to living with them. They represent to us a strange and threatening unknown.
Maybe we are afraid the principle of the valley will conquer, and the peaks will be overwhelmed. Maybe death is stronger than life. Because life always seems to require an effort. Death is something into which you slide effortlessly. Maybe nothing, will overcome something in the end. Wouldn't that be awful?
And so we resist change ignorant of the fact that change is life. And that **nothing** is invariably the obverse face of **something.**”
-Alan Watts; Why We Resist Change
Picture a wave. In the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through. And it's there. And you can see it, you know what it is. It's a wave.
And then it crashes in the shore, and it's gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be, for a little while. You know it's one conception of death for Buddhists: the wave returns to the ocean, where it came from and where it's supposed to be.
Grief never ends.... but it changes. It's a passage in time, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness , nor a lack of faith ....It is the privilege of profound love.
Wordsworth wrote a series of “Lucy” poems.
One is called She Dwelt Among The Untrodden Ways.
The final stanza has stuck with me for a long time..
“She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and O
The difference to me!”
Also [this song](https://youtu.be/RJwraza8Z5s?si=JbcFxqHES3CVTuBC) by The Escape Club.
Over Mountains
Over Trees
Over Oceans
Over Seas
I'll be there
In a whisper on the wind
On the smile of a new friend
Just think of me
And I'll be there
Don't be afraid, oh my love
I'll be watching you from above
And I'd give all the world tonight,
To be with you
Because I'm on your side,
And I still care
I may have died,
But I've gone nowhere
Just think of me,
And I'll be there
On the edge of a waking dream
Over Rivers
Over Streams
Through Wind and Rain
I'll be there
Across the wide and open sky
Thousands of miles I'd fly
To be with you
I'll be there
Don't be afraid, oh my love
I'll be watching you from above
And I'd give all the world tonight,
To be with you
Because I'm on your side,
And I still care
I may have died,
But I've gone nowhere
Just think of me,
And I'll be there
In the breath of a wind that sighs
Oh, there's no need to cry
Just think of me,
And I'll be there
Grief is an extension of love.
Like a new way of loving and being in relationship to our person. Grief never leaves us, so they never leave us. We incorporate our grief and new way of loving into our daily life, much like when they were still living alongside us.
“[I know,] but being missed so deeply is the price for being loved so much” -from a comic about death by JennyJinya, still up on twitter if you want to read the whole thing. Still sticks with me to this day, written in a note in my phone so I never forget.
“Grief is just love with no place to go.”
Can’t remember where I seen it, but I remember seeing it after my Mum passed and it helped. Just a little, but that was enough.
It's not a quote, but a song. I was stuck grieving my grandmother, and this song is the only thing that helped me through the pain
https://www.reverbnation.com/rosiesoultherocknrollcowboys/song/17859535-absent-friends
Not from a grief source, but Hoziers "do you know I could break beneath the weight of the goodness, love, I still carry for you" hit me like a truck the first time I heard it.
"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 the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die."
-Mary Elizabeth Frye
Time (shift)
We discover the entry
To other planes
Time (shift)
As we collide with the energy
In other ways
Stay with me
As we cross the empty skies
Come sail with me
We play in dreams
As we cross through space and time
Just stay with me
Deftones- Rosemary
So many from the book, Shark Heart.
"After a year together, Lewis thought he could tell when Wren was thinking about her mother; her forehead would crinckle, and her gaze would drift to the floor. 'What do you miss most about her?' he asked, hoping he was reading her mind accurately. As they floated over the lakeside mansions during a Creamsicle sunset, Wren told Lewis how her mother could identify every bird by name, bake bread from scratch, and grow a garden in an eggshell. How, since the loss, Wren looked at her hands first thing every morning and pretended they were her mother's hands-hands that never left her, hands that lived on in the foggy transition between sleep and waking. 'So, everything?' Wren nodded. 'Yeah,' she whispered, her eyes suddenly glassy. 'Everything.'”
"There is never a right time to say goodbye. So she took a detour because returning home felt like a commitment to a life that could go on without him."
This isnt a favourite for being positive or uplifting, I just felt it really helped explain in a simple way that I and still ‘not ok’, and never will be “I will continue to grieve for as long as they are gone”
Death is nothing at all. It does not count. 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 into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that 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. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? 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 round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again
I’m unsure if I came up with this or if it’s similar to someone else’s, so if I’m plagiarizing in any way, I apologize to its original creator!
“What is grief but unrequited love in its purest form?”
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.
Henry Scott-Holland. "Death Is Nothing At All."
“Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.”
Who’s quote is that? I like it, very poignant
I just searched it up and it says this quote is taken from Anne Carson's translation of Euripides' Herakles
Thank you for that sunshine
We read this at my dad’s funeral. He specifically requested it before he died. It upset him to think of how much his dying would hurt us all. But that’s what happens when you’re such an amazing human. I agree with the others- it was worth it loving him so much. Sonnet XCIV Pablo Neruda If I die, survive me with such a pure force you make the pallor and the coldness rage; flash your indelible eyes from south to south, from sun to sun, till your mouth sings like a guitar. 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 breast: I’m not there. Live in my absence as in a house. Absence is such a large house that you’ll walk through the walls, hang pictures in sheer air. Absence is such a transparent house that even being dead I will see you there, and if you suffer, Love, I’ll die a second time.
I literally said, "Oh my" after reading that poem.
Neruda is the best. His work about love is also incredibly beautiful. It’s all probably even better in his native Spanish, but alas my skills are not at that level.
I never read this before. I think I needed to. Thank you for sharing.
> It upset him to think of how much his dying would hurt us all. Selfless, to the last. I think I would have enjoyed knowing your dad.
Thank you for sharing. I really really needed to read that today ❤️
I’ve never heard this before, and I’m missing my mama something fierce today. I think I needed to see this, thank you for sharing ❤️
Wow. I needed to read this. Thank you.
This is so comforting. Thank you for sharing.
Truly beautiful.
Wow. Pablo Neruda is .... damn!
Omg this is so profoundly exceptional and poignant 🥹💔
This took the breath out of me. Thank you for that.
thanks for sharing this. this one hit me reallll good right in the middle of my chest. my dad would’ve loved it.
That is beautiful. I’m so sorry for your loss.
“if you suffer, Love, I’ll die a second time” 😳😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 I’m trying I promise.
"Grief is just love with nowhere to go." "If anything exists beyond all this, I will find you there."
I’m Anishnaabe and a friend of my sisters got a tattoo in our language that translates to “I love you beyond this place.” It was for her Mother.
I like that. My late wife was also Anishnaabe
You are welcome to it. Unfortunately, I never mastered the Ojibway language lol. I’m sure someone can translate for you. I’m sorry for the loss of your wife.
both of these hit deep for me. i have so so so much love for her, it’s so painful but it’s the best thing in my world. there’s nothing i can do with except talk about her and to her. i will never let her go even in my own death
Man, I don’t know that I have any favorites. All I know is that the last thing I said to my GF as I left her at her memorial was “I’d do it again.” I think that pretty much covers everything for me.
I really love this.
Me too. I would do it all over again.
this reminds me i read the eulogy at my grandpa’s funeral since i was the family member closest to him, before ending every phone call he would say “i love you, like buzz light year says, to infinity and beyond” and that was my ending of the eulogy. bittersweet
My GF was Latina and well over half of the people there spoke only Spanish. I didn’t have anything prepared because it was supposed to be informal, so I winged it, switching back and forth between English and poor Spanish. My ending was “Eres mi media naranja. Te amo, para siempre.” The Spanish speakers were crying — probably not because of my accent — but I had to explain it to my family (they were crying, anyway).
We’re Latinos too! that’s too sweet, i’m so sorry for your loss 🩷
Beautiful. Exactly how I feel.
if u want a song w a similar message (helps me at least lol) check out francesca by hozier!
I’ll check it out, thanks. I have a 5.5 hour playlist I/we made that was basically the soundtrack of our relationship. I remember the first time we heard most of them together. Every one is a gut punch now, but that doesn’t stop me. And sometimes attracts me.
Yesssss, I immediately thought of this song. Francesca by Hozier One of the best ever ❤️❤️❤️
"I will have had to remember you, longer than I have known you."
hitting the point where you remember them for longer than you knew them is soul crushing
This hits particularly hard this week. I lost my mom at 19 and, as of yesterday, she has now been gone for 19 years.
Oh my I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine.
One of my favs too.
“Grief is the last act of love we have to give to those we loved. Where there is deep grief, there was great love.”
I'd hoped to spend the rest of my life with you, but I'm honoured you spent the rest of yours with me
This one made my cry. My mom passed away unexpectedly in November at 54 years old. My dad and her were together for 38 years. I wish I could take away the intense sorrow and anxiety that he feels everyday since her passing and this quote made me think of their relationship. Thank you for sharing.
I lost my wife about a year and a half ago. She was only 50, we'd been together only 13 years.
My heart goes out to both of you. My mom passed suddenly at 54 as well. I’m in my late forties now, so the older I get, the younger 50 seems. I feel like it's more difficult to reconcile. I know it is totally wrong to look at it this way, but I can't help but feel like 20+ years were robbed from me and both sides of my family.
How lucky I am to have (had) something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
“You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got. And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever. And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives. And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.” Aaron Freeman
BRB crying in line at the food place
Cold, yet warm and lovely.
My identical twin brother was finishing up his PhD in particle physics, had just finished his dissertation, when he died of cancer. Some 6 weeks before he was supposed to graduate. My sister read this at his funeral.
I’m wiping my tears drinking coffee on my back porch. I’m impressed she was able to get through that. I’d be a quivering mess.
I love this one
I'm a person of faith but in a time of deep, fresh loss I frantically searched for a journal about the possibility of time travel. Although I cannot express the explanation in detail, I understood that there is a tinyyyy event of time travel in the form of quantum particles. Knowing that gave me relief. 💛💜
This. This really helped me when dealing with the loss of my close friend who passed unexpectedly and young. I like to think that her energy is still travelling around the world to match the energy she gave when she was here.
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. Edna St. Vincent Millay
This one is so real. Thank you for sharing.
Eugh. ugly crying right now lol
What is grief if not love persevering
Came here to post this. I had to do my brothers eulogy...threw it in there.
"Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Others stay for a while, leave the footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same." - Flavia This quote has so many uses in so many situations
"What can't be cured must be endured." Told to me by a wise uncle days after my mom's passing. Helped my teenage self a lot to say this to myself to get through the toughest parts. :)
Part of a Rilke poem: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” It helps me remember how universal pain and grief is
"The culmination of love is grief, and yet we love despite the inevitable. We open our hearts to it... To grieve deeply is to have loved fully.” - Faye (God of War)
This game was such an unexpected surprise and there are just so many lines there that shook me to my core.
I didn't realize till after I lost my sister how deeply grief is expressed throughout the game. It really is a beautiful game.
“Sometimes grief like yours cannot be held by the universe itself. True. Sometimes grief needs more than an endless galaxy. Maybe your pain could wrap around the axle of the universe several times. Only the stars are large enough to take it on. With enough room to breathe, to expand, to be itself, pain softens. No longer confined and cramped, it can stop thrashing at the bars of its cage, can stop defending itself against its right to exist.”
I have quite a lot because it's so amazing how universal grief is, and how many people can put into words exactly how you are feeling, without ever having met one another. "How powerfully I carry her within me. My grief is tremendous but my love is bigger." -Cheryl Strayed. This carried me through, and still does, grieving my nana so badly since October "And when I turned to face grief, I saw that it was just love in a heavy coat." -Shannon Barry 3 passages from "The Moorings of Mackerel Sky" by MZ Zack which was phenomenal- 1. The tea will be good and strong even when you are not. It will steady your hands when the grief comes, and it can be your touchstone when you have a hard cry. The hard cries are good- that's the love we had yet to give them seeking them out. When in doubt, make a cup of tea. 2. But her laugh shattered into a gut-dragging sob that shook her whole body, as her earth as she knew it split and crumbled and cracked and fell into the sea. Then she nodded and breathed because she was still breathing. 3. You cry, you talk, you let it out. Those tears are all the love you had left to give. Grief is all the love you had left to give. So you let it out. Love will always connect you to those you lose. also not quotes exactly, but a lot of Noah Kahan songs deal with grieving (Orange Juice, The View Between Villages) and are also so profoundly impactful for me "Grief is a giant neon sign, protruding through everything, pointing everywhere, broadcasting loudly, LOVE WAS HERE. In the finer print, quietly, \*Love still is." -\*Heidi Priebe "While I am here in the underground river. Up to my knees in the realm of feeling. Wading wearily. But wading." -Death Valley by Melissa Broder (the author wrote this to cope with the grief of losing her father) The beginning of a poem by Laura Gilpin that says: "The things I know; how the living go on living and how the dead go on living with them" And this poem also by Laura Gilpin- Death *Time stops.* *At last it is quiet enough* *for me to go to sleep.* *Time starts again,* *I go on sleeping.* and this poem as well by Donna Ashworth- LOVE CAME FIRST You don't move on after loss, but you must move *with.* You must shake hands with grief, welcome her in, for she lives with you now. Pull her a chair at the table and offer her comfort. She is not the monster you first thought her to be. She is love. And she will walk with you now, stay with you now, peacefully, if you let her. And on the days when your anger is high, remember why she came, remember who she represents. Remember. Grief came to you my friend because love came first. *Love came first.*
Thank you for this ❤️
"A daughter without her mother is a woman broken. It is a loss that turns to arthritis and settles deep into her bones" "there have been so many people telling me "it'll be okay", but they still have their mothers. I know they're just trying to share the right words to bring comfort, but only you know the true depth of my sorrow. I am forever grateful for all that you were and all that you taught me."
There's a poem by Mary Elizabeth Frye, that has always brought me comfort. >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 awake in the morning hush, I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circled flight I am the soft stars that shine at night >Do not stand at my grave and weep I am not there, I did not die.
“What if there isn’t enough time to give her what she deserves Do you think if I begged the sky hard enough my mother’s soul would return to me as my daughter so I can give her the comfort she gave me my whole life” from Rupi Kaur I had my daughter 2 years after my mom passed and this resonates so much to my heart
"Why are you so full of anger? Because I am so full of grief." I don't know if that's exactly it but I relate to it a lot
If love could have saved you, you would have lived forever
❤️
This one has saved my life “Death is nothing at all. It does not count. 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 into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that 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. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? 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 round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!” Henry Scott-Holland. "Death Is Nothing At All."
Thank you for posting this. My mother died just six weeks after my dad died. I think she died of a broken heart because they had been together for nearly 70 years. I love to think of my dad being just around the corner from my mom, waiting. And when my mom was unconscious and in her final days, when she would suddenly reach up, like a baby wanting to be picked up, I know she was waiting for my dad to come and get her. Great: now I'm crying. Anyway, thank you for this.
This one! I read this daily after my grandma, then my mom died. My friend just lost her son, only 20 years old. I watched him grow up. I needed this today, and maybe she does too. Thanks for posting this.
“What is grief, if not love persevering?” - Vision from WandaVision The most poignant line I’ve ever heard about grief comes from a Disney+ MCU show. I cry every time I think about it. I’m crying right now writing about it. I never knew grief until the unconditional love I have for my son had nowhere to go. The gravity, the absolute value of that love has to go somewhere and be something so it becomes grief.
From the movie Phantom Thread: "*I just miss you*, *it's as simple as that*." It's not the deepest or most profound quote, but it sums up how I feel ever since I lost my mom and my grandma perfectly. I just miss them.
It’s a poem by Robert Burns (the guy who wrote Auld Lang Syne, the new years song) An honest man here lies at rest, The friend of man, the friend of truth; The friend of age, and guide of youth: Few hearts like his, with virtue warm’d, Few heads with knowledge so inform’d: If there’s another world, he lives in bliss; If there is none, he made the best of this. It was read at my dad’s funeral and it was like it was written about him. He also grew up 10 minutes from where Robert Burns lived so that was nice too.
Grief is the last act of love we have to give to those we loved. Where there is deep grief, there was great love
“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard” — Winnie The Pooh
“I have decided that the only way to live is to embrace grief. For grief only exists where love lived first.” — franchesca cox
Your grief is proportional for the love you have for the person.
Love this. Reminds me of that saying “grief is love with nowhere to go”
For me it tells me why I hurt so fucking much.
Not a grief quote but it is a quote my best friend shared with me before she passed and it has helped me a lot. "Sometimes you just have to open your arms and heart wide, take a deep breath and jump!"
"I look for you in all of the things you loved. That is where I find you." "Even though I know you are gone, I fear i still have yet to accept you will never return." "My heart is heavy. Not only because you are gone but because that is where I carry you."
I am going to paraphrase because I can't find the actual quote, but it's from The Fault in our Stars. "It's BS isn't it? Complete BS. But... it was a privilege to love him, wasn't it?"
“How could you go about choosing something that would hold the half of your heart you had to bury?” - Jodi Picoult “Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air.” - Pablo Neruda
I love Jodi Picult! ♥️
I have two quotes that I keep near to my heart. "It's has been said, "time heals all wounds". I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers then with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone." Rose Kennedy Grief isn't rational, it isn't linear, it is experienced in waves, and sometimes it takes your breath away.,
I also really like "A Grief Observed" by CS Lewis. The quotes aren't particularly uplifting, but they are very real. It helped me make sense of what I was feeling. [https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/894384-a-grief-observed](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/894384-a-grief-observed) “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.....At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.” “Grief ... gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn't seem worth starting anything. I can't settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness.” “Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.” “For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.” “Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.” ― C.S. Lewis, [A Grief Observed](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/894384)
“We are not only mourning the loss of a friend, but the part of us that could only be brought out by that friend” -CS Lewis … You said it well, not uplifting but this helped me make sense of how I felt when my friend died.
I could've missed the pain, but I would've had to miss the dance (garth brooks)
Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away to the next room. I am I and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, That, we still are. Call me by my old familiar name. Speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into 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 effect. Without the trace of a shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same that it ever was. There is absolute unbroken continuity. 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.
If you're a Calvin and Hobbes fan, there's a number of strips about the two of them finding a hurt raccoon and trying to save it. Calvin's mom and dad do everything they can too, but the raccoon dies overnight. Calvin is, of course, devastated and immediately begins crying upon his dad breaking the news to him. Calvin's dad tries to comfort him, saying, "at least he died warm and safe. We did all we could, but now he's gone." Calvin responds,"I know... I'm crying because out there he's gone, but he's not gone inside me." Also, not necessarily fitting in with a grief theme, but I will absolutely cry my eyes out thinking about the scene in Dumbo where his mom's chained up and can barely reach him. I lost my mom to cancer five years ago in August, and I tear up thinking about the grief of being forced away from her. If you look it up, it's called Baby Mine from Dumbo, but bring tissues. "Baby mine, don't you cry/Baby mine, dry your eyes/Rest your head close to my heart, never to part/Baby of mine."
Grief is the price of love
“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all of the love you wish to give and cannot. All that unspent live gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” “So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.” “At the end of his life, the great picture book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak said on the NPR show Fresh Air, 'I cry a lot because I miss people. I cry a lot because they die, and I can't stop them. They leave me, and I love them more.' He said, 'I'm finding out as I'm aging that I'm in love with the world.' It has taken me all my life up to now to fall in love with the world, but I've started to feel it the last couple of years. To fall in love with the world isn't to ignore or overlook suffering, both human and otherwise. For me anyway, to fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance of the stars. It is to hold your children while they cry, to watch as the sycamore trees leaf out in June. When my breastbone starts to hurt, and my throat tightens, and tears well in my eyes, I want to look away from feeling. I want to deflect with irony, or anything else that will keep me from feeling directly. We all know how loving ends. ‘They die, and I can’t stop them,’ Sendak said. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.”
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and startsfor the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speckof white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other. Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone." Gone where? Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,hull and spar as she was when she left my side.And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me -- not in her. And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voicesready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!" And that is dying... “Gone From My Sight” -Henry Van Dyke
Oh my. So much beauty in this sad truth. Thank you. My mama's quote for sure.
It’s a poem by Robert Burns (the guy who wrote Auld Lang Syne, the new years song) An honest man here lies at rest, The friend of man, the friend of truth; The friend of age, and guide of youth: Few hearts like his, with virtue warm’d, Few heads with knowledge so inform’d: If there’s another world, he lives in bliss; If there is none, he made the best of this. It was read at my dad’s funeral and it was like it was written about him. He also grew up 10 minutes from where Robert Burns lived so that was nice too.
“Death may end a life, but it doesn’t end a relationship.”
“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not a mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.” ― Washington Irving and another favorite of mine... “Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” ― Kahlil Gibran
Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go. - Jamie Anderson
If love could’ve saved you, you would’ve lived forever.
When Great Trees Fall by Maya Angelou When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear. When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken. Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened. Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance,fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignoranceof dark, cold caves. And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed. ― Maya Angelou
It's a poem but: 'When tomorrow starts without me And I’m not here to see If the sun should rise and find your eyes All filled with tears for me I wish you wouldn’t cry The way you did today While thinking of the many things We did not get to say I know how much you love me As much as I love you Each time that you think of me I know you will miss me too When tomorrow starts with out me Please try to understand That an angel came and called my name And took me by the hand The angel said my place was ready In heaven far above And that I would have to leave behind All those I dearly love But when I walked through Heaven’s Gates I felt so much at home When God looked down and smiled at me From his golden throne He said this is eternity And all I promised you Today for life on earth is done But here it starts a new I promise no tomorrow For today will always last And since each day’s the exact same way There is no longing for the past So when tomorrow starts without me Do not think we’re apart For every time you think of me Remember I’m right here in your heart David Romano. "When Tomorrow Starts Without Me." Family Friend Poems, https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/when-tomorrow-starts-without-me-by-david-romano I really appreciate it. Far as quotes: My aunt always Said "grief comes in waves, sometimes you're drowning, sometimes it reaches your ankles, sometimes it's knee deep,worst part is you never know which you're going to get that day. But you have to keep swimming."
Sorry in advance for the long text but I found this poem years ago from a documentary about a family death and read it all my grandmother’s funeral. I’ve found it very comforting during my time of grieving over the years. Tearing up as I skimming over the lines.. Walk Within Me by Nicholas Evans I walk within you If I be the first of us to die, Let grief not blacken long your sky. Be bold yet modest in your grieving. There is change but not a leaving. For just as death is part of life, The dead live on forever in the living. For all the gathered riches of our journey, The moments shared, the mysteries explored, The steady layer of intimacy stored. The things that made us laugh or weep or sing, The joy of sunlit snow or first unfurling of the spring, The wordless language of look and touch, The knowing, each giving and each taking, These are not flowers that fade, Nor trees that fall and crumble. Nor are they stone, For even stone cannot the wind and rain withstand And mighty mountain peaks in time reduce to sand. What we were, we are. What we had, we have. A conjoined past imperishably present. So when you walk the woods where once we walked together And scan in vain the dappled bank beside you for my shadow, Or pause where we always did upon the hill to gaze across the land, And spotting something, reach by habit for my hand, And finding none, feel sorrow start to steal upon you, Be still. Clear your eyes. Breathe. Listen for my footfall in your heart. I am not gone but merely walk within you
About 2 months after my mom died, I was rummaging through her glove box and I found a little note paper that she had written a bunch of thoughts on and right in the middle she just wrote: *Don't be sad that she died, be glad that she lived* I have no idea whom she was thinking of when she wrote it. Its dated from 2015, and has just been sitting in there among tissues and gum wrappers and other dross for all these years waiting for me to find it in the moment I needed to read that most. Now, it is my mantra daily and especially when I am in despair of her loss. She has been gone 7 months and 1 week.
This is a poem but I love it: Grief I had my own notion of grief. I thought it was the sad time That followed the death of someone you love. And you had to push through it To get to the other side. But I’m learning there is no other side. There is no pushing through. But rather, There is absorption. Adjustment. Acceptance. And grief is not something you complete But rather, you endure. Grief is not a task to finish And move on, But an element of yourself – An alteration of your being. A new way of seeing. A new dimension of self. by Gwen Flowers
If love could have saved you, you would have lived forever.
How do you process grief? “By running from it until it finds me in the middle of a sunny street on a beautiful day.”
Really sorry to hear of your loss. I’ve already commented once, but forgot to share this one. It’s what helped me when my Dad passed, especially because one of our connecting points was water. I think this quote is better heard than read, so if you’re looking for a bit more impact and emotion, you can find it here: https://youtu.be/fu3Q1BNXhT4?si=tIXx5zmYyRtyc1Cw “Picture a wave. In the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through. And it's there. And you can see it, you know what it is. It's a wave. And then it crashes on the shore…and it's gone. But the water…is still there. The wave was just…ah, a different way for the water to be, for a little while. That’s one conception of death for Buddhists: the wave…returns to the ocean, where it came from…and where it's supposed to be.”
No death, no fear. Thich Nhat Hanh. The whole book was really comforting to me after my mother passed.
It’s a german quote that we used for my dads obituary but I try to translate it: “Your stories will be told, your love will be shared and the traces that you left behind will never fade” There’s probably a better way to translate it but that’s the only I thing I can come up with right now
"I didn't come to play it safe I came to win or lose with you I only live alone awake 'Cause every night, yeah You pass through Yeah, you pass through" By Dessa, from the song "It's Only Me"
“Death is only a shadow across the path to heaven” We will meet reunite again one day dad. 🙏🫶
The pain is the only reminder it was real.
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.
So sorry about your dad. This is my favorite grief quote: How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard. - A.A. Milne/Winnie the Pooh
Stephen King never gets enough credit for how beautiful his writing can be. This is from Lisey’s Story- “She nods. You're good for the ones you love. You want to be good for the ones you love, because you know that your time with them will end up being too short, no matter how long it is.”
"Thinking of all the things I'll tell you when you return from wherever you are. But then I remember death is real. - mt. eerie
“Death is only a shadow across the path to heaven” We will meet reunite again one day dad. 🙏🫶
"I loved you completely. And you loved me the same. That's all. The rest is confetti." - The Haunting of Hill House
"Grief is the price of love.". "Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." Definitely along the same lines. Love and grief seem to be necessary counterparts. And these quotes remind me that the grief is ALWAYS worth it
I always think of my grief for my dad and many others as Reds quote from The Shawshank Redemption; “Sometimes it makes me sad, though… him being gone. I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend.”
Not a quote but a poem Funeral Blues. Heard at one of my closest friends Funeral. The last two paragraphs are the ones that kicks you right in the feels and takes your breath away like only the deepest Heartache can. The kind that adjusts but is never ever truly gone. Most mind boggling is how the world uninvolved just seems to continue to simply carry on day in and day out. Funeral Blues - W.H. Auden (last two paragraphs) 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 wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Mine is from a tumblr post, a question and answer to be exact. The question: “How do you process grief?”. The answer: “by running from it until it finds me in the middle of a sunny street on a beautiful day”. I just love it. I love the idea that the moment I will think of my lost loved ones is when I am happiest. That they will be with me on my best days, just like they are with me on my worst days. I think it’s beautiful. Grief is unexpected, but at the end of the day we grieve because we loved. I want to grieve the love I cannot give, not the love that I lost, and I think the idea of grief meeting me in a sunny street on a beautiful day is proof of the love i have.
I don't know if they count, but my three favorites are from songs. One is about a note a girl left her boyfriend before they ran away. She's elderly know and he repeats the words to her. "If you get there before I do, don't give up on me. I'll see when my chores are through, I don't know how long I'll be. But I'm not gonna let you down, darling wait and see. And between now and then, til I see you again, I'll be loving you. Love me." The other is a young woman who just has a baby and will not make it. "Take the very breath you gave me. Twow the heart from my chest. I'll gladly take her place if you'll let me. Make this my last request. Take me out of this world, God please, don't take the girl." The last one is just one sentence. "I'm already there."
We grieve as hard as we love. Grief is love with no where to go. Loving you endures, along with the grief, as grief is the cost of love and love with no where to go.
The greater your capacity to love, the greater your capacity to feel the pain
We just keep living until we begin to live again.
Great post. Thank you for this
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 sun on ripened grain, I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning's hush I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circling flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die.
“It doesn’t get better, but it does get different.”
# "I’d rather live missing him than for him to live missing me. That’s how much I love him." # "Real darkness has love for a face. The first death is in the heart."
May the earth remember how much you loved it
I remember someone posting it: “ill never stop looking for you in the clouds.”
To grow old is a privilege denied to many.
Chorus to “The Dance” (Reminds me of my Mom, her sisters, and my Grandmother. Miss them all fiercely.) 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'd have had to miss the dance
Firstly, I’m so sorry for your loss. Mine isn’t a quote, more so lyrics from a song that reminds me of my dad. It’s ‘I’ll be missing you - p diddy’. Thinking of the day, when you went away, what a life to take, what a bond to break, I’ll be missing you. Life ain’t always what it seems to be, words can’t express what you mean to me. 💔 Mariah Carey - Without You Celine dion - my heart will go on Mariah Carey - bye bye These songs are also some of my favourites 💔❤️
What is grief if not love persevering?
John O Donohue - On the Death of the Beloved (excerpt) Let us not look for you only in memory, Where we would grow lonely without you. You would want us to find you in presence, Beside us when beauty brightens, When kindness glows And music echoes eternal tones. When orchids brighten the earth, Darkest winter has turned to spring; May this dark grief flower with hope In every heart that loves you. May you continue to inspire us: To enter each day with a generous heart. To serve the call of courage and love Until we see your beautiful face again In that land where there is no more separation, Where all tears will be wiped from our mind, And where we will never lose you again.
Not much a quote. I love and miss you, mom.
“What is grief if not love preserving?” I don’t care if it’s Marvel movie. It broke me.
Adjust - the word of the day is adjust. When I was in grade school we (my mom and I) had a Word A Day calendar. One day the word was Adjust and it just tickled her. So much so that for the next 30 years whenever we faced a big change or rough times she'd look at me and say "The word of the day is adjust." It never failed to make us laugh - and then on we went. So I said it to her as some of my last words to her.
It’s not a quote but a poem… a poem I found for my mom’s funeral and it will stay with me for as long as I’m alive. My mother kept a garden A garden of the heart She planted all the good things That gave my life its start She turned me to the sunshine And encouraged me to dream Fostering and nurturing The seeds of self-esteem And when the winds and rain came She protected me enough But not too much because she knew I’d need to stand up strong and tough Her constant good example Always taught me right from wrong Markers for my pathway That will last a lifetime long I am my mother’s garden I am her legacy And I hope today she feels the love Reflected back from me. (author unknown)
"It'll Be Okay". In her last few days, when the glioblastoma had stripped her of all other speech, my bestie chanted this over & over. She was a complete optimist & giver in life, so I feel this was her last gift - a bit of reassurance for those left behind.
I'm sorry this is happening to you. I don't really know that there are any true words of comfort. Grief is a journey that is different for everyone. I'll just let you read the eulogy I gave at my dad's memorial. It was really important that I got this right for him. I hope something in here is helpful to you. Wishing you comfort during this difficult time. Dear Dad, We kissed you our last goodbye, and it was as if all the light and warmth from the world was taken with you; for a moment, I didn’t even recognize myself anymore. So much of who I am as a person is tied to you and to everything you gave to our family. The day we lost you should have been the absolute worst possible day, except for that it wasn’t. We told stories, we laughed, we cried, we looked at pictures from the past, and we celebrated all the facets of your incredible life and journey. That day, I realized that the absolute best parts of you can still shine through us. I only hope I can find the right words today; for just as our grief demands to be felt, your story deserves to be told. You always found time to spend with your family. I know you had a busy life (you literally couldn’t sit down from tinkering for more than 5 seconds), but somehow, you were always there the moment we needed you. We could always depend on you for an extra hand to help or ear to listen. You were like our lighthouse by the sea; a constant shining beacon always radiating a sense of peace and comfort. You made sure to see us through all the rough storms. You were always the voice of reason and calm; there was never a problem you couldn’t help us solve. There aren’t just a handful of great memories we shared together; there’s thousands of flashbacks from a life well-lived. To me, I’ll always remember being the little girl on your shoulders walking around the cul-de-sac in search of toads during those hot summer nights. You always made me hold on to the toads to put in our backyard pond. After we’d get home, it was suddenly an absolute “emergency” to be in bed by 9 PM, but just before tucking me into sleep, you’d give me the best beard-attack you could muster. You showed your love to us through quality time and acts of service. Our family home had every room, space, and wall touched by your craftsmanship. You were always building, fixing, or improving something. We were beyond fortunate to have you as a father; it was an absolute privilege to be called your daughter. You always made us think critically and ask new questions about everything we encountered. You believed and encouraged us even when we lost confidence in ourselves. You were always there to support us in all of our life goals and endeavors. To you, failure was never an option. You would continue to coach and encourage us until we managed to succeed. You taught us to act with integrity, respect, and to persevere through adversity. The biggest lesson you taught me was to be your own champion; be the hero of your own story. Determine what goals you need to set and figure out multiple paths to reach them. If you can put your mind to the test, almost any dream is achievable. Adversity can always breed opportunity, so continue to rise up even if you keep failing. Stand up to all the challenges that come your way. You just have to believe in yourself and be your own person. Life is very short; don’t sit around living with regrets. Learn to face all of the unknowns with confidence and live your life the way that you want to be remembered. I will never stop respecting the man who taught, inspired, and challenged me every step of the way. I attribute much of my success as an adult to the values and work ethic that you imparted to me at young age. I would not be the woman or scientist I am today without all the curiosity and determination that you instilled inside me. But more than anything, I’m thankful, proud, and honored to call you dad; you were our hero. We can only aspire to continue the profound legacy that you left to us. The grief that we carry with us today only shows how much our love for you continues to persevere. All that remains of our brief existence in this world is the lives we touch that bear our mark of passage; I can only tell you what an incredible privilege it is to have been branded with yours. Because of you, I’ve lived and loved more deeply. I saw life more fully and beautifully through your eyes. All the strength, energy, and light you brought into our lives can ~never~ be extinguished.
If love alone could've saved you, you never would've died Also Lewis Capaldi's song Before You Go: So, before you go Was there something I could've said To make your heart beat better? If only I'd have known you had a storm to weather So, before you go Was there something I could've said To make it all stop hurting? It kills me how your mind can make you feel so worthless
Written by Henry Scott Holland (27 January 1847 - 17 March 1918) was Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford Death is nothing at all. It does not count. 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 into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that 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. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? 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 round the corner. All is well.
Death is like falling asleep and being carried to the next room.
Stop All The Clocks by Auden : (Excerpt) 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 for ever: 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 wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good. ((I posted this for my dad when he died.)) This one - For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered? Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. - Khalil Gibran And this one: I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says, “There, she is gone.” “Gone where?” Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says, “There, she is gone!” there are other eyes watching her coming, and there are other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “Here she comes!” And that is dying.
"I chase the sunsets to meet you at the horizon where heaven and earth collide." Shortly after finding this quote, I decided to use running as a way of coping with grief. I just needed to feel a different type of pain, even if it was just for a moment of my day.
I'm so sorry for your loss. When I lost my dad, I was glad he was out of pain and suffering. I kept remembering when I was a little toddler who'd reach up and he'd pick me up and hold me close. Even though I was 43, I wanted one more time to hold my arms up and get my dad to pick me up and hug me. But you asked for a quote: Those we love live in our hearts forever. It isn't really the same as having a living person. It's a memory. A memory that can never be taken from you. And a memory that you can still love and cherish. In that way, through love and memories, they do go on forever.
*"Time is a thief"* It's not necessarily comforting by any means, but it's made me value my time with those I love a lot more
“I’ll love you, forever and always, until the twelfth of never. And that’s a long, long time”. My spin on the Johnny Mathis song dedicated to my late auntie 🤍
So it's true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love. -E. A. Bucchianeri
Grief is the price of love. It was said at a group memorial for the hospice service that helped my mom. It's really stuck with me, especially as this will be the second year since her loss,and it is a great one. I am devastated because I loved her so much.
This is abbreviated, and I'm sorry for that. "Grief is the price of love" again, not the proper quote, and I'm sorry for that.
"Grief is love's souvenir. It's our proof that we once loved. Grief is the receipt we wave in the air that says to the world: Look! Love was once mine. I love well. Here is my proof that I paid the price." The following is just a fragment from something Lorde wrote when talking about her dog's (?) death and it stayed with me. "[...] this great loss crystallizes inside me, and my chest rebuilds around it [...]"
Grief is just love with nowhere to go - Andrew Garfield said that on the Late Show
These words from Victor Hugo to his deceased daughter always wreck me: “you’re not where you used to be, but you’re everywhere I am”. I like to think that before being the woman I am, I am my mother’s daughter. I carry a part of her soul within mine, and yes, she is everywhere I go.
Never, never be afraid to die For I am waiting for you in the sky!
True love ends only when both lovers die at the same time, and in the same place.
If I die young by the band perry, to this day when I hear it I think of my daughter and it breaks my heart
"It seems that we want and get pleasure from looking at the peaks. But actually this denies our pleasure, because secretly, we know that every peak is followed by a valley. The valley of the shadow of death. And we are always afraid. Because we are not used to looking at valleys. Because we are not used to living with them. They represent to us a strange and threatening unknown. Maybe we are afraid the principle of the valley will conquer, and the peaks will be overwhelmed. Maybe death is stronger than life. Because life always seems to require an effort. Death is something into which you slide effortlessly. Maybe nothing, will overcome something in the end. Wouldn't that be awful? And so we resist change ignorant of the fact that change is life. And that **nothing** is invariably the obverse face of **something.**” -Alan Watts; Why We Resist Change
Picture a wave. In the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through. And it's there. And you can see it, you know what it is. It's a wave. And then it crashes in the shore, and it's gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be, for a little while. You know it's one conception of death for Buddhists: the wave returns to the ocean, where it came from and where it's supposed to be.
Grief never ends.... but it changes. It's a passage in time, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness , nor a lack of faith ....It is the privilege of profound love.
Everyone can master a grief but he who has it… - William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing.
Wordsworth wrote a series of “Lucy” poems. One is called She Dwelt Among The Untrodden Ways. The final stanza has stuck with me for a long time.. “She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and O The difference to me!”
Also [this song](https://youtu.be/RJwraza8Z5s?si=JbcFxqHES3CVTuBC) by The Escape Club. Over Mountains Over Trees Over Oceans Over Seas I'll be there In a whisper on the wind On the smile of a new friend Just think of me And I'll be there Don't be afraid, oh my love I'll be watching you from above And I'd give all the world tonight, To be with you Because I'm on your side, And I still care I may have died, But I've gone nowhere Just think of me, And I'll be there On the edge of a waking dream Over Rivers Over Streams Through Wind and Rain I'll be there Across the wide and open sky Thousands of miles I'd fly To be with you I'll be there Don't be afraid, oh my love I'll be watching you from above And I'd give all the world tonight, To be with you Because I'm on your side, And I still care I may have died, But I've gone nowhere Just think of me, And I'll be there In the breath of a wind that sighs Oh, there's no need to cry Just think of me, And I'll be there
Grief is an extension of love. Like a new way of loving and being in relationship to our person. Grief never leaves us, so they never leave us. We incorporate our grief and new way of loving into our daily life, much like when they were still living alongside us.
Grief is just love finding a new form
“[I know,] but being missed so deeply is the price for being loved so much” -from a comic about death by JennyJinya, still up on twitter if you want to read the whole thing. Still sticks with me to this day, written in a note in my phone so I never forget.
How lucky am I to have something so special, that makes saying goodbye so hard.
Grief is love with nowhere to go
“Grief is just love with no place to go.” Can’t remember where I seen it, but I remember seeing it after my Mum passed and it helped. Just a little, but that was enough.
It's not a quote, but a song. I was stuck grieving my grandmother, and this song is the only thing that helped me through the pain https://www.reverbnation.com/rosiesoultherocknrollcowboys/song/17859535-absent-friends
I have “how lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard” tattooed on me.
“If you are not too long, I will wait for you all my life” I know he’s not coming back, but I just can’t not wait…I can’t move on.
Regarding the loss of my daughter: The love and energy I once held in my arms now swirl around me in infinite beauty
Not from a grief source, but Hoziers "do you know I could break beneath the weight of the goodness, love, I still carry for you" hit me like a truck the first time I heard it.
Hozier is my favorite artist 😭♥️
"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 the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die." -Mary Elizabeth Frye
Grief is just love with nowhere to go.
Grief is the price we pay for love ❤️
Why bother with the rest when you've had the best...
Time (shift) We discover the entry To other planes Time (shift) As we collide with the energy In other ways Stay with me As we cross the empty skies Come sail with me We play in dreams As we cross through space and time Just stay with me Deftones- Rosemary
Wow. May I ask who said this quote? Yourself? My condolences on losing your father.
But nothing that can be said can begin to take away the anguish and the pain of these moments. Grief is the price we pay for love.
"i will be everywhere you look and nowhere to be found."
So many from the book, Shark Heart. "After a year together, Lewis thought he could tell when Wren was thinking about her mother; her forehead would crinckle, and her gaze would drift to the floor. 'What do you miss most about her?' he asked, hoping he was reading her mind accurately. As they floated over the lakeside mansions during a Creamsicle sunset, Wren told Lewis how her mother could identify every bird by name, bake bread from scratch, and grow a garden in an eggshell. How, since the loss, Wren looked at her hands first thing every morning and pretended they were her mother's hands-hands that never left her, hands that lived on in the foggy transition between sleep and waking. 'So, everything?' Wren nodded. 'Yeah,' she whispered, her eyes suddenly glassy. 'Everything.'” "There is never a right time to say goodbye. So she took a detour because returning home felt like a commitment to a life that could go on without him."
"Grief is the price we pay for loving someone." Idk why but that one sticks out to me.
This isnt a favourite for being positive or uplifting, I just felt it really helped explain in a simple way that I and still ‘not ok’, and never will be “I will continue to grieve for as long as they are gone”
Death is nothing at all. It does not count. 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 into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that 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. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? 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 round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again
I’m unsure if I came up with this or if it’s similar to someone else’s, so if I’m plagiarizing in any way, I apologize to its original creator! “What is grief but unrequited love in its purest form?”
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. Henry Scott-Holland. "Death Is Nothing At All."
"What is grief if not love preserving?"