Quotes & Sayings About Loss At Christmas

Ever since the Christmas of '53, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection; the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving
Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home. — John Irving

I believe deeply that God does his best work in our lives during times of great heartbreak and loss, and I believe that much of that rich work is done by the hands of people who love us, who dive into the wreckage with us and show us who God is, over and over and over. There are years when the Christmas spirit is hard to come by, and it's in those seasons when I'm so thankful for Advent. Consider it a less flashy but still very beautiful way of being present to this season. Give up for a while your false and failing attempts at merriment, and thank God for thin places, and for Advent, for a season that understands longing and loneliness and long nights. Let yourself fall open to Advent, to anticipation, to the belief that what is empty will be filled, what is broken will be repaired, and what is lost can always be found, no matter how many times it's been lost. — Shauna Niequist

With some stories, you really can't rush things. And it's often best just to sit back and enjoy the journey for what it is. — Melissa Hill

Not only weight loss surgery is unnecessary but also it deprives human being a normal life. People after surgery would never be able to enjoy their food ever for the rest of their life whether it is Christmas or they are on their holidays or their child birthday or any other festival.
List of problems and complications after the weight loss surgery operation are endless as one may get additional problems such as Hernia, Internal Bleeding, Swelling of the skin around the wounds, etc. I wonder how many weight loss surgeons advice about weight loss surgery to their own family members. — Subodh Gupta

And then she realized that after that Christmas party, she didn't really lose anything, except respect for everyone. — Crystal Woods

From the edge of the forest where the mountains begin, a pack of sleeping wolves, huddled together in the cold, were woken. Travelling on the crystal air was a sound to fear in the night - the sound of parents calling out in anguish and loss.
A sound that would even chill the souls of beasts. — Sebastian Gregory

We continued talking as my purchases were rung up - about the first
Christmas, the sadness of ending up in a cemetery on a holiday, and the
pain of getting through that first year.
"They tell me it gets better," she said with a sigh.
"Can I give you a hug?" I asked shyly before I turned to go. She nodded eagerly, and one small sob escaped her as I squeezed her shoulders tightly.
I might look back on that first Christmas and remember it as the year
I did so many things so badly, the year I forgot to feed my family.
Or I might just remember it as the Christmas I learned what it meant to reach out to a hurting stranger. — Mary Potter Kenyon

Christmas is such a time of struggle anyway, crammed with busy and hurry and the expectation that you will be joyful, no matter what. Then, if you're like me, when you just sit quietly, just be, and let yourself feel what you feel, the guilt creeps in. Because you're alive and the world is big, and you should be feeling some freakin' Christmas spirit. — Anna White

It was only out on the cold street ... that Riley began to feel the full loss of his father. Poppa, he thought, Oh Poppa. He'd grieved him since Christmas when he first took ill ... but it was here now, an empty place where once had been Poppa. A quietness to replace Poppa's good voice. A gust of wind that said he was there, not on earth, but in the air. Riley knew he would not be the same man again, for Riley had been Poppa's son and was now only his survivor. — Lori Lansens

You have no idea how well you are doing, John complimented me
just a few minutes after he mentioned the Christmas card. What did that mean: That I was doing well? That I'd come to a family gathering? That I'd remembered to bring food? That I was dressed, and my hair combed? That I was wearing shoes? I wasn't sure, but maybe just making an appearance at a family event meant I was handling things well. — Mary Potter Kenyon

It began with the Christmas tree lights. They were candy-bright, mouth-size. She wanted to feel the lightness of them on her tongue, the spark on her tastebuds. Without him life was so dark, and all the holiday debris only made it worse. She promised herself she wouldn't bite down. — Kirsty Logan

The creek was hers now and yet she felt nothing. It had been the longest walk of her life for no one was at the end waiting for her. She slept through winter. Missed Christmas and awoke to a New Year. She felt so lost. Until the first bluebells and ramsons colored the green-brown floor of her world. — Sarah Winman

There are few things emptier than the space where a Christmas tree used to be. — Kate Lord Brown

Because, George thought as she sat there with her eyes closed back before Christmas in Mrs Rock's self-consciously comfortable chair in the counselling office, how can it be that there's an advert on TV with dancing bananas unpeeling themselves in it and teabags doing a dance, and her mother will never see that advert?
How can that advert exist and her mother not exist in the world?
She didn't say it out loud, though, because there wasn't a point.
It isn't about saying.
It is about the hole which will form in the roof through which the cold will intensify and after which the structure of the house will begin to shift, like it ought, and through which George will be able to lie every night in bed watching the black sky. — Ali Smith

I looked at the place on my finger again. This time it really was an empty space. And silent. It was big. For the first time I faced a loss with a sense of curiosity. What would come to fill up this space? Would I make another ring? Or would I find another ring in a secondhand shop, or even in another country? Perhaps someday someone I had not even met would give me a ring because he loved me. I was thirty-five and I had never trusted life before. I had never allowed any empty spaces. I had believed that empty spaces remained empty. Life had been about hanging on to what you had and medical training had only reinforced the avoidance of loss at all costs. Anything I had ever let go of had claw marks on it. Yet this empty space had become different. It held all the excitement and anticipation of a wrapped Christmas present. — Rachel Naomi Remen

My wife and I tend to overgift to our kids at Christmas. We laugh and feel foolish when a kid is so distracted with one toy that we must force them into opening the next, or when something grand goes completely unnoticed in a corner. How consumerist, right? How crassly American. How like God. We are all that overwhelmed kid, not even noticing our heartbeats, not even noticing our breathing, not even noticing that our fingertips can feel and pick things up, that pie smells like pie and that our hangnails heal and that honey-crisp apples are real and that dogs wag their tails and that awe perpetually awaits us in the sky. The real yearning, the solomonic state of mind, is caused by too much gift, by too many things to love in too short a time. Because the more we are given, the more we feel the loss as we are all made poor and sent back to our dust. — N.D. Wilson

Love and loss come in equal measure. — Kate Lord Brown

If I hired one of the stock boys to chase me around the store with a licorice whip, I'd be thin by Christmas. — Jennette Fulda