Brother Grief Quotes & Sayings

And they had folded his brother's hands across his suited chest, as if he would be preserved in this sanguine pose forever, but only the heavy callouses visible at the sides of his hands seemed real. It was only the callouses that appeared to be familiar and believable. — Kent Haruf

I think about the people I know with the absolutely largest hearts, people with a stunning capacity for endurance and grace and kindness against the most screaming terrors and pains. My Mom and Dad, for example, enduring the death of their first child at six months old, the boy the brother I never met, dying quietly in his stroller on the porch in the moment that my mother stepped back inside to get a pair of gloves because the crisp brilliant April wind was filled with a whistling cutting wind....

Fifty years later after five more children and two miscarriages she is standing in the kitchen with her usual eternal endless cup of tea and I ask her: How do you get over the death of your child?

And she says, in her blunt honest direct terse kind way,
You don't.
Her face harrowed like a hawk for a moment in the swirling steam of the tea.
p112-13 — Brian Doyle

The death of a child occasions a passion of grief and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will never inspire. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Seeing his grief over Eamon makes mine pathetic. No one will feel the loss of his brother more than him. Not his parents, not his brother's friends. Not me. Me being here will probably just make things worse, not better. Or maybe that's my arrogance in thinking I might still have the same kind of effect on him that he has on me. — Jolene Perry

Jesus never tried to hide his loneliness and dependence on other people. He chose his disciples not as servants but as friends. He shared moments of joy and grief with them, and asked for them in times of need. They became his family, his substitute mother and brothers and sisters. They gave up everything for him, as he had given up everything for them. He loved them, plain and simple. — Philip Yancey

Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. and Mrs. Daneeka: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father, or brother was killed, wounded, or reported missing in action. — Joseph Heller

Hearing my brother's words coming out of Henry, this stranger in a strange town, made me feel wild with all the loss - wild and wired with no place to put those feelings. — Laura Anderson Kurk

It is night at the front, a shadow, a shot. The Jew who has just fired
hears a moan ...
And then, mother, the hair stands up on his head, for only a few feet from him in the darkness the enemy voice is reciting in Hebrew the prayer of the dying. Ai, God, the soldier has cut down a Jewish brother! Ai, misery! He drops his rifle and runs into no man's land, insane with shame and grief. Insane, you understand? The enemy fires at him, his comrades shout at him to come back. But he refuses; he stays in no man's land and dies. Ai, misery, ai ... ! — Andre Schwarz-Bart

The outrage was on the scale of God. My younger brother was immortal and they hadn't noticed. Immortality had been concealed in my brother's body while he was alive, and we hadn't noticed that it dwelt there. Now my brother's body was dead, and immortality with it ... And the error, the outrage, filled the whole universe. — Marguerite Duras

Hat happened to my little brother had to fit into my life, not consume or define it. — Leslie A. Gordon

It came to Morgan that Nicholas must have been a beaten boy, too, and that meant Grampa Earp was, as well. Which was no surprise, really, when Morg thought about that mean old man. How many sons were in that chain? Morgan wondered, and grief gave way to the pride he'd felt the day his brother Wyatt stood up to his first bully and put an end to a chain of vengeful, frightened, beaten boys. — Mary Doria Russell

Like many people whose lives had formed around a particularly painful incident, she had grown used to providing ellipses around the event of her brother's death to keep conversations comfortable. At some point the subconscious logic of this had spread to the rest of her life so that she rarely talked about things she had been deeply affected by. It wasn't hard to do. — Mira Jacob

Through the process of specifically writing this memoir, there was so much reckoning that I had to do. It was very difficult. It doesn't erase anything that happened, but I think that it was healthy for me to do it. The teenage self-loathing that I suffered from all of a sudden found itself turned into rapids with my grief after my brother died. I turned it inwards. In the same way that my mom processes her grief and her problems. This project, as a memoir, has helped me funnel it outwards. — Jesmyn Ward

He actually did it, didn't he?" Marsh said, shaking his head in wonder. "That bastard. There are two things I'll never forgive him for. The first is for stealing my dream of overthrowing the Final Empire, then actually succeeding at it."
Vin paused. "And the second?"
Marsh turned spike-heads towards her. "Getting himself killed to do it. — Brandon Sanderson

Mandy, I hardly think this was appropriate, not after ... you know ... after the funeral we haven't had the money for any of your weird little games and I was hoping you'd be more mature now that Jud's gone," her father had disappointedly added. "How much'd that cake cost you?"
"It's paid for," Mandy had argued, but her voice had sounded tiny in the harbour wind. "I used the cash from my summer job at Frenchy's last year and I ... it was my birthday, dad!"
"You can't even be normal about this one thing, can you?" her father had complained.
Mandy hadn't cried, she'd only stared back knowingly, her voice shaky. " ... I'm normal. — Rebecca McNutt

By all accounts Rafe's life had been shattered by the loss of his brother Peter. But whereas she turned away from drink when Draven died, Rafe had simply upended a barrel of brandy on his head and hadn't taken that hat off since. — Eloisa James

It was important to my brother. And now"-I shook my head, knowing I sounded like I'd lost it-"now it's become this obsession." I seemed to have quite a collection of those.
Clouds darkened overhead, forming a canopy of gray. "But what if you let your grief become your guilt?" His voice was as soft as the night breeze. "It's okay to let go."
I shook my head and moved out of his grip. "I can't," I said. "Not now. Not yet."
Abd sometimes I feared ... not ever. — Jenny B. Jones

Terrorist activity is continually recurring in various parts of the world, sowing death and destruction and plunging many of our brothers and sisters into grief and despair — Pope Benedict XVI

A deep, black grief gripped Robert Kennedy in the months following his brother's assassination. He lost weight, fell into melancholy silences, wore his brother's clothes, smoked the cigars his brother had liked, and imitated his mannerisms. — Thurston Clarke

Then Arjuma saw in both armies fathers, grandfathers, sons, grandsons; fathers of wives, uncles, masters; brothers companions and friends ... When Arjuna thus saw his kinsmen face to face in both lines of battle, he was overcome by grief and despair and thus he spoke with a sinking heart. — Juan Mascaro

The fish will not blame you. You have to do this. I will not look at you and think you're a bad brother. Nobody will. You have to leave because this time you have to save yourself. — Hannah Moskowitz

I closed my eyes and listened to the occasional chirps of tiny birds hidden in the trees around us, the bubbling of water over rocks down below, cicadas rattling a chorus off in the distance. All sounds of the world carrying on like it always had. So much could change or be lost, and still, the rest of the world went on like it was nothing. It didn't seem wrong, but it didn't seem right either. I'd gone on today like it was nothing. I'd laughed and felt happy and forgotten for a little while that this was now a world without my brother in it. — Jessi Kirby

The photograph of my brother that is in this album shows a young man, beautiful and perfect in the way of young people, for young people are always perfect and beautiful until they are not, until the moment they just are not. — Jamaica Kincaid

I realized early that despite her gregarious and inherently buoyant disposition, a certain sadness resided in my mother. Even I, her only child, whom she loved more than anything in the world, could do little to soothe the sorrow that has taken root with the separation from her parents, her two sisters and her brother. The contrast in the life my mother experienced before and after leaving Tibet was so extreme, it must have been impossible for her to make sense of her life and to escape the inexhaustible longing for the past. Caring for me on her own inside crowded rooms of tenement buildings in towns and cities, she must have felt she had dreamt her past or that she was dreaming her present existence. The places and residences we lived in were never quite home to her and led her to cling, more tenaciously, to the past. My mother had guarded her past sorrows from me because she knew me well enough to sense I would carry her grief as my own. — Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

Niall's nostrils flared with a patience-inducing breath before he whispered, "Seriously? Are you packing today?"

Duff's overbuilt shoulders shifted as he turned to whisper a response. "Hey. You wear your glasses every day, Poindexter. I wear my gun."

"I wasn't aware that you knew what the term Poindexter meant."

"I'm smarter than I look" was Duff's terse response.

Keir chuckled. "He'd have to be."

Duff's muscular shoulders shifted. "So help me, baby brother, if you give me any grief today, I will lay you out flat."

"Zip it. Both of you."

Niall, Duff and Keir Watson — Julie Miller

I find my anger ebbing away, and I'm lost in muffled grief again, this time not just for Tris, but for Uriah, whose smile is burned into my memory. My friend's brother, and then my friend, too, though not for long enough to let his humor work its way into me, not for long enough. — Veronica Roth

She understood the genre constraints, the decencies were supposed to be observing. The morally cosy vision allows the embrace of monstrosity only as a reaction to suffering or as an act of rage against the Almighty. Vampire interviewee Louis is in despair at his brother's death when he accepts Lestat's offer. Frankenstein's creature is driven to violence by the violence done to him. Even Lucifer's rebellion emerges from the agony of injured price. The message is clear: By all means become an abomination - but only while unhinged by grief or wrath. — Glen Duncan

I got a lot of grief from my teammates about that. It might backfire on my mom. Hopefully, my brother will have another chance somewhere down the road. — Scott Niedermayer

The unmarried woman seldom escapes a widowhood of the spirit. There is sure to be some one, parent, brother, sister, friend, more comfortable to her than the day, with whom her life is so entwined that the wrench of parting leaves a torn void never entirely healed or filled ... — Charlotte Mary Yonge

The Bishop, who was sitting close to him, gently touched his hand. "You could not help telling me who you were. This is not my house; it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer, you are hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And do not thank me; do not say that I receive you in my house. No one is at home here, except the man who needs a refuge. I say to you, who are passing by, that you are much more at home here than I am myself. Everything here is yours. What need have I to know your name? Besides, before you told me you had one which I knew."
The man opened his eyes in astonishment.
"Really? You knew what I was called?"
"Yes," replied the Bishop, "you are called my brother. — Victor Hugo

O, brothers! let us leave the shame and sin Of taking vainly in a plaintive mood, The holy name of Grief
holy herein, That, by the grief of One, came all our good. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

grief. We do and say strange things - sometimes bizarre things - when we are swallowed up in grief. No one should be hard on us when we say thoughtless and selfish things when we are in grief. Both Mary and Martha accused Jesus of being the cause of their brother's death by not responding immediately to their request: "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died" (John 11:21, 32). Jesus did not rebuke either of them. Instead, He wept with them (see John 11:35). So with all of us. He knows our frame; He remembers we are dust. — R.T. Kendall

But there is no such man; for, brother, men
Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air and agony with words. — William Shakespeare

And she knows then that she was right about her brother, that it takes an unbelievable strength to feel this kind of grief, and she doesn't know if she can handle it, because it really hurts, hurts her more than the razor ever could. — Julia Hoban

Brook, you don't sound like yourself."

My reply came out of my mouth before I could choose it. "I am not the person I was three weeks ago and I will never be that person again."

Surprised by my own response, I relayed it to my therapist who was helping me work through issues surrounding my brother's death. "Of course you're not," she said. "And one of the best things you can do for yourself is to know that you are a different person now. — Brook Noel

Soon after her beloved young brother was killed, she asked me, "What is the purpose of grief? Does it serve any biological function? — Arthur C. Clarke

The great love is gone. There are still little loves - friend to friend, brother to sister, student to teacher. Will you deny yourself comfort at the hearthfire of a cottage because you may no longer sit by the fireplace of a palace? Will you deny yourself to those who reach out to you in hopes of warming themselves at your hearthfire? — Mercedes Lackey

One of the earliest and most vivid memories of Robin's childhood was of the day that the family dog had been put down. She herself had been too young to understand what her father was saying; she took the continuing existence of Bruno, her oldest brother's beloved Labrador, for granted. Confused by her parents' solemnity, she had turned to Stephen for a clue as to how to react, and all security had crumbled, for she had seen, for the first time in her short life, happiness and comfort drain out of his small and merry face, and his lips whiten as his mouth fell open. She had heard oblivion howling in the silence that preceded his awful scream of anguish, and then she had cried, inconsolably, not for Bruno, but for the terrifying grief of her brother. — Robert Galbraith

Sometimes I think the people to feel the saddest for are people who are unable to connect with the profound - people such as my boring brother-in-law, a hearty type so concerned with normality and fitting in that he eliminates any possibility of uniqueness for himself and his own personality. I wonder if some day, when he is older, he will wake up and the deeper part of him will realize that he has never allowed himself to truly exist, and he will cry with regret and shame and grief. — Douglas Coupland

You do it and see how hard that thing is to control. I swear it has a mind of its own." Hadyn
"No sugar, that's your front tail." Edena
"Edena! I can't believe you said that to your brother! Where did you hear that?" Seraphina
"Good grief, Matera! I am almost 30 years old. I am the last of my friends who hasn't had a lover yet. And if that's what concerns you, then you need to talk to your son about where he's been planting that shorter front tail lately." Edena — Sherrilyn Kenyon

And during the campaign of 1936, she writes that she and her brother would always rather be out doing things when they're sick, rather than take to their beds. And I think Eleanor Roosevelt always responded to pain by doing more, by doing something, by being active. And I think she just couldn't bear to look at her childhood grief. And she didn't. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

Neither did she realise yet that grief is a kind of glue, too, that the essence of humanity is this empathy, and that we fall together in that moment of tenderest perception when we see and feel each other's wounds and know another's sorrow like a brother of our own. — Niall Williams

And me all the while having to pee - coughing into the mike when my throat was tired and raw - eyes stinging and lips and chin crumpling in grief at his anger. The sweet tinkle of Electra on the bass and Iphy on the treble with Mama's voice counting, "One and two and ... " as the twins had their piano lesson inside the trailer. The gurgle and hum of the pumps that filtered my brother Arty's "Aqua Boy" tank. And the dim round moon of baby Fortunato's face peering at me from the dark of the risers above Papa. — Katherine Dunn

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

No man is an island, No man stands alone; Each man's joy is joy to me, Each man's grief is my own. We need one another, So I will defend Each man as my brother, Each man as my friend. — Jon M. Huntsman Sr.

Art thou in misery, brother? Then I pray Be comforted. Thy grief shall pass away. Art thou elated? Ah, be not too gay; Temper thy joy: this, too, shall pass away. Art thou in danger? Still let reason sway, And cling to hope: this, too, shall pass away. Tempted art thou? In all thine anguish lay One truth to heart: this, too, shall pass away. Do rays of loftier glory round thee play? Kinglike art thou? This, too, shall pass away! Whate'er thou art, wher'er thy footsteps stray, Heed these wise words: This, too, shall pass away. — Paul Hamilton Hayne

I pray thee, cease thy counsel,
Which falls into mine ears as profitless
As water in a sieve: give not me counsel;
Nor let no comforter delight mine ear
But such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine:
... for, brother, men
Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air and agony with words.
No, no; 'tis all men's office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow,
But no man's virtue nor sufficiency
To be so moral when he shall endure
The like himself. Therefore give me no counsel:
My griefs cry louder than advertisement. — William Shakespeare

Even with my father and brother dying, I didn't quite process the grief. — Marc Forster

Sam was your brother, and Trick was your friend, but what they did had nothing to do with you. You don't have to choose. Just because me and your dad couldn't live together, didn't mean you had to stop loving one of us, did it? Doesn't work like that. Love doesn't work like that. — C.J. Flood