Dad Loss Quotes & Sayings

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

Was Fergus Urvill anywhere, still? Apart from the body - whatever was left of him physically, down there in that dark, cold pressure - was there anything else? Was his personality intact somehow, somewhere?
I found that I couldn't believe that it was. Neither was dad's, neither was Rory's, nor Aunt Fiona's, nor Darren Watt's. There was no such continuation; it just didn't work that way, and there should even be a sort of relief in the comprehension that it didn't. We continue in our children, and in our works and in the memories of others; we continue in our dust and ash. To want more was not just childish, but cowardly, and somehow constipatory, too. Death was change; it led to new chances, new vacancies, new niches and opportunities; it was not all loss. — Iain Banks

My Dad is everywhere and he is nowhere. My world tilts on a different axis, orbiting the sun of my own family- but still, I feel his warmth. — Elisabeth Egan

Every time you think of your dad, you're
resurrecting him. Why shouldn't he continue to live
in this world while resting in the other? — Clyde DeSouza

The walls were coming down around me, but still, I couldn't imagine telling the truth. Not now. It was too late. How can I tell Mom and Dad what we'd done? It would ruin everything. It would ruin their image of me; it would ruin every thought they'd ever had about who I was. It would be another death.Another loss. Another miscarriage. — Dana Reinhardt

As I load my shirt into the washer for the night, I daydream about making a sign and hanging it around my neck. It could read, I MISS CHARLIE KHAN.
As I drive home, I picture other signs- one for everyone who has a secret. Bill Coro's would say, I CAN'T READ, BUT I CAN THROW A FOOTBALL. Me. Shunk's would read, I WISH I COULD TOSS YOU ALL ON AN ISLAND BY YOURSELVES. Dad's would read, I HATE MYSELF FOR NO GOOD REASON. — A.S. King

Well, I'm sorry you couldn't make it either. I'm sorry I had to sit there in that church--which, by the way, had a broken air conditioner--sweating, watching all those people march down the aisle to look in my mother's casket and whisper to themselves all this mess about how much she looked like herself, even though she didn't. I'm sorry you weren't there to hear the lame choir drag out, song after song. I'm sorry you weren't there to see my dad try his best to be upbeat, cracking bad jokes in his speech, choking on his words. I'm sorry you weren't there to watch me totally lose it and explode into tears. I'm sorry you weren't there for me, but it doesn't matter, because even if you were, you wouldn't be able to feel what I feel. Nobody can. Even the preacher said so. — Jason Reynolds

Six months
It been six months since you passed
How long must these feelings of loss last ?
It's been six months since you died,
on the surface it appears I never really cried.
I hide away my tears, my sorrow, my fears.
They say time heals all wounds
Wounds may heal, but scars remain.
No one really sees the pain
that hides behind my eyes.
A heart of gold stopped beating
two twinkling eyes closed to rest
God broke our hearts that day to prove he only took the best
Never a day goes by that you're not in our hearts, our minds and in our souls.
We miss you dad. — Michael Tianias

not that I'd even been thinking about Cinzia until the moment before, but it had all seemed so solid, so immutable, the whole social system of the building, a nexus where I could always stop in and see people, say hello, find out what was going on. People who had known my mother. People who had known my dad. And the farther I walked away, the more upset I got, at the loss of one of the few stable and unchanging docking-points in the world that I'd taken for granted: familiar faces, glad greetings: hey manito! For — Donna Tartt

Eventually my father bought a vacation house for us in Port Saint Lucie, Florida. My dad's friend had died, so my father bought the house from his widow. We would go down there once a year, and my father believed that he had bought a good investment property. Twelve years later he would sell it at a loss. Almost immediately after the sale, Club Med built a resort there near where the New York Mets would set up their spring training camp soon after. I've tracked articles since then about how Port Saint Lucie has had the fastest growing home prices in the country. When I told my friends at Rye Country Day that we had bought a second home in Florida, they were unimpressed because it was not Palm Beach. When I told my friends in Tarrytown that we had bought a house in Florida, they were sad and asked me when my family was moving. Gosh, poor people can be really dumb sometimes. — Greg Fitzsimmons

Because Dad told you he'd be here forever.
Because I thought forever was like Mars -- far away. — Kwame Alexander

It makes the other one more precious and also not enough. We have to try to fill not only our own boots but other people's too - yours, Leo's, Dad's. We have to expand at the moment we feel the most shrunk. — Rosamund Lupton

When I was younger, I had terrible skin ... my mother has terrible skin. Male-pattern hair loss is starting to come in ... my dad is bald. It's so unfair; my brother's tall, has perfect skin, great hair, but I'm like the runt. — Russell Tovey

Get back in the box. Set it for home, present day. Go see your mom. Bring your dad. Have dinner, the three of you. Go find The Woman You Never Married and see if she might want to be The Woman You Are Going To Marry Someday. Step out of this box. Pop open the hatch. The forces within the chronohydraulic air lock will equalize. Step out into the world of time and risk and loss again. Move forward, into the emily plane. Find the book you wrote, and read it until the end, but don't turn the last page yet, keep stalling, see how long you can keep expanding the infinitely expandable moment. Enjoy the elastic present, which can accommodate as little or as much as you want to put in there. Stretch it out, live inside of it. — Charles Yu

Dark thought started to slip into my mind, despite all my efforts to keep them out. What was the use of anything? We were born, we lived a few years, grew old, and then died. What was the point of it all? All those people in the County and the wide world beyond, living their short little lives before going to the grave. What was it all for? My dad was dead. He'd worked hard all his life, but the journey of his life had had only one destination: the grave. That's where we were all heading. into the grave. Into the soil, to be eaten by worms. Poor Billy Bradley had been the Spook's apprentice before me. He'd had his fingers bitten off by a boggat and had died of shock and loss of blood. And where was he now? In a grave. Not even in a churchyard. He was buried outside because the Church considered him no better than a malevolent witch. That would be my fate too. A grave in unhallowed ground. — Joseph Delaney

When we were leaving London, Dad spent about an hour trying to push his wardrobe through the bedroom door. He turned it on its side. He tried it upside down. He tilted it one way and then the other but it just would not fit. Words like "Mum" and "Affair" and "Dad" and "Drinking" were just like that wardrobe--too big to get out. No matter what I did, I couldn't fit them through the space between my teeth. — Annabel Pitcher

As I drive home, I picture other signs- one for everyone who has a secret. Bill Corso's would say, I CAN'T READ, BUT I CAN THROW A FOOTBALL. Mr. Shunk's would read, I WISH I COULD TOSS YOU ALL ON AN ISLAND BY YOURSELVES. Dad's would read, I HATE MYSELF FOR NO GOOD REASON.

My Idea grows. — A.S. King

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

And then our Mum and Dad were in love and they were truly dry-stone strong and durable and people speak of ease and joy and spontaneity and the fact that their two smells became one smell, our smell. Us. — Max Porter

He's wearing a T-shirt for the first time, answering thatquestion I had when we met. It's not muscle filling out Max's clothes; he's just chubby. It looks good on him either way. The thought feels bizarrely out of place after everything that happened today.
I've rehearsed what to tell him. Last year, a friend of my aunt's died, and Iris and Dad coached me on what to say. I copy it almost word for word. "Max, I didn't know your sister well. But she was nice to me. I'm very sorry for your loss." I hold his gaze for a second. — Corinne Duyvis

Dr. R scratches out a note on his pad.
"Losing you both was only the practice pain, wasn't it? For my mum and dad ... "
He puts his finger on his lips, his elbow at his chest, not racked with cancer. "Yes."
"And when that happens, this will seem like nothing."
He nods.
"When it happens," he asks me, "what will get you through?"
"Friends who love me."
"And if your friends weren't there?"
"Music through headphones."
"And if the music stopped?"
"A sermon by Rabbi Wolpe."
"If there was no religion?"
"The mountains and the sky."
"If you leave California?"
"Numbered streets to keep me walking."
"If New York falls into the ocean?"
Your voice in my head. — Emma Forrest

When you don't have something anymore, you learn to live without it." That's what my dad told me that first night after he found me sleeping inside a closet underneath a pile of my mom's clothes. All the different smells of her were still there and the memories were alive even if she wasn't.
I looked up into his face and wondered why would I ever want to learn to live without her? That felt like she really would be gone forever, and I wanted to limp on the broken piece of me so I could feel her there all the time. — Alan Silberberg

One of the things I am very aware of not having in my life is the love of my father ... but I know now that it is hard to make up that loss in the life of a daughter.
It's your dad who tells you that you are beautiful.
Its your dad who picks you up over his head and carries you on his shoulders.
It's your did who will fight the monsters under your bed.
It's your dad who tells you that you are worth a lot, so don't settle for the first guy who tells you you're pretty. — Sheila Walsh

So we did the only thing we knew to do. We got in the car and drove to Dallas to be at the funeral with Jen. As she and her family walked down the center aisle behind her dad's casket, she smiled at us despite the big tears that were rolling down her cheeks. And that's when I learned one of the most important lessons I've ever learned about what it means to be a good friend: you show up for your people. You don't wait for your friend to ask you to come; you get in your car and go. You don't have to know the right words to say, you don't have to offer sage wisdom about loss and love; you just show up. You hold her hand and hug her neck and wipe her tears. You let her know that you hurt because she is in pain, and you'd do anything to take it from her if you could. You listen.... You show up for your friend, in the good times and the bad times. — Melanie Shankle

She looked so disappointed, so grieved and desperate that Clem longed to comfort her, only he couldn't think of thing to say that she hadn't heard a hundred times from Dad and Dr. Snow and Mrs. Mack: how things would get better in time, though no one knew how much time, and that life might be a little better for her and Jess once school began again. — Judith Clarke

During that time, The Mouth came by to pray with us, and my dad began to spend his evenings sitting in the yellow lawn chair and staring at the highway, or down in the basement with his isotope material, finding comfort in the stability that's created from decay. — Miriam Toews

Where's your dad now?" Thomas asked.
"He's gone."
The word gone echoed all over the reservation. The reservation was gone itself, just a shell of its former self, just a fragment of the whole. But the reservation still possessed the power and rage, magic and loss, joys and jealousy. The reservation tugged at the lives of its Indians, stole from them in the middle of the night, watched impassively as the horses and salmon disappeared. But the reservation forgave, too. Sam Bone vanished between foot falls on the way to the Trading Post one summer day and reappeared years later to finish his walk. Thomas, Chess, and Checkers heard the word gone shake the foundation of the house. — Sherman Alexie

Kache did not know how to rewind his life, how to undo the one thing that had undone him. His world was indeed flat, and he'd fallen off the edge and landed stretched out on a sofa, on pause, while the television pictures moved and the voices instructed him on everything he needed to know about everything--except how to bring his mom and his dad and Denny back from the dead. — Sere Prince Halverson

I remember the big gaping hole left by my dad's absence in the months following the accident. He'd been the one who went to my parent-teacher conferences, the one who taught me mnemonics to memorize the Great Lakes and the Earth's atmospheres. Whenever I did something silly, my dad always made me feel better by telling me a story from the firehouse about someone who had done something even sillier. Sometimes you don't realize all the things a person does for you until they aren't there to do them anymore. — Paula Stokes

I was definitely incredibly close to my dad, in a way that was all-encompassing. I am close to my mum, too, but there were areas that she and I did not share. So his loss to me was huge, personally and professionally. He believed in me, not just as a father, but as a director, and that always meant a lot. — Natasha Richardson

I've made my peace. He will always be part of me. I don't need to watch him die. I am just glad I was able to watch him live. — Ralph Webster

Not long after my mom died, my dad pretty much kicked me out of the house. He never said, "Get out of my house," but instead, I came home one night to find all my clothes scattered all over our front lawn. — Brenda Perlin

Dad: "You're a survivor yourself, then?" Augustus: "I am. I didn't cut this fella off for the sheer unadulterated pleasure of it, although it is an excellent weight-loss strategy. Legs are heavy!" Dad: — John Green

Well, if you live long enough, you lose a lot. Just as long as you don't throw them away. Whatever you loose, you'll find again, but what you throw away you never get back.
-Oibore (Enishi's dad) to Yahiko and Misao — Nobuhiro Watsuki

I'm sometimes scared that I'm forgetting what my dad was like. — Ross Welford

At first I thought he was laughing because his shoulders were shaking, but then he put his palms on his eyes and I realized he was crying. It was the quietest crying I've ever heard. Like a whisper. I was going to go over to him, but then I thought maybe he was whisper-crying because he didn't want me or anyone else to hear him. — R.J. Palacio

But in the service when we recite 'They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old', we both cry. For different reasons. I have become swept up in this. These wiry old lions. Their properness. Their improperness. Their tidy jackets. Their name tags. Their risky humour. Their imagination. Their no shit. I am ashamed of what we haven't done with our freedom and their victories. Living off the fat of the land. With our central heating and our power steering and our fast food and our leaf-blowers and our shopping malls. My tears are self-indulgent: about loss, the world; and about me probably. While Dad is just having a cry. — Keggie Carew

Do you need anything?" she asks. A mom A dad. Someone. Anyone. Can you arrange for that? "Nah, I'm good. — Daisy Whitney

How're you holding up?" He slid down the wall next to me and handed me a beer.
"I've had better days." I took a long, satisfying drink and stared at the wall in front of me.
"Yeah," was his simple reply. "My dad is downstairs. He said this wake sucks." I could hear that he was smiling.
I took another swig. "Well, I didn't plan this shindig, but the next funeral I host, I'll make sure it's a rager. — J.B. Hartnett

My dad died in May of '97. The effects of his death immediately were not all that hard, but a year or two later it hit, when my job as Dad was sort of done and I was sending my kids to college. And somehow, the emotional intensity of that event mixed with the loss of my own dad, was kind of upsetting. — Wayne Watson