Loss Of A Daughter Quotes & Sayings

Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss. — Joan Didion

I didn't get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I'd wished she'd done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very heigh of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we'd left off. She was my mother, but I was motherless. I was trapped by her, but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could full. I'd have to fill it myself again and again and again. — Cheryl Strayed

Obama also allowed Hillary supporters to insert an absurd statement into the platform suggesting that media sexism spurred her loss and that 'demeaning portrayals of women ... dampen the dreams of our daughters' [ ... ] It would have been better to put this language in the platform: 'A woman who wildly mismanages and bankrupts a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar campaign operation, and then blames sexism in society, will dampen the dreams of our daughters.' — Maureen Dowd

Coming back last time to the house she grew up in, Isabel had been reminded of the darkness that had descended with her brothers' deaths, how loss had leaked all over her mother's life like a stain. As a fourteen-year-old, Isabel had searched the dictionary. She knew that if a wife lost a husband, there was a whole new word to describe who she was: she was now a widow. A husband became a widower. But if a parent loss a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or daughter. That seemed odd. As to her own status, she wondered whether she was still technically a sister, now that her adored brothers had died. — M.L. Stedman

But now, seeing these letters his father wrote to June Bailey Roe, seeing his father's painful devotion to someone who simply wasn't real - a daughter he never had - Wade is unable to suppress his dread. All that love, all those feelings, all that pain, fastened to nothing, a terrible, drifting chaos. His future loss of mind becomes the new premise of his life, and he feels, already, the loss of the things he loves, feels himself trying to find some other way to hold on to them. — Emily Ruskovich

The sudden loss of her father was like living with a wound that would never heal, yet her memories of him were fading more and more every day. — Frank Beddor

Don't listen to those people who suggest you should be "over" your daughter's death by now. The people who squawk the loudest about such
things have almost never had to get over anything. Or at least not anything that was genuinely, mind-fuckingly, soul-crushingly life altering. Some of
those people believe they're being helpful by minimizing your pain. Others are scared of the intensity of your loss and so they use their words to
push your grief away. Many of those people love you and are worthy of your love, but they are not the people who will be helpful to you when it
comes to healing the pain of your daughter's death.
They live on Planet Earth. You live on Planet My Baby Died. — Cheryl Strayed

What a joke, coming from a woman who worked for the fashion industry. Really. Starving yourself to fit into a size zero - why did that size even exist? Zero referred to the absence of something, but what did it mean in terms of a model's measurements? Her fat? Or her presence? How much could you cut away before the person herself vanished? It was hypocritical, that's what it was. I said as much, adding, If you're so keen on me being healthy then you should have no problem accepting me for the way I am. That's what's healthy, Mom. Not being focused on all this freaky weight-loss stuff. — Nenia Campbell

You will find the way, daughter of the forest. Through grief and pain, through many trials, through betrayal and loss, your feet will walk a straight path. — Juliet Marillier

Not every daughter mourns the loss of a mother. — Rasmenia Massoud

My parents' loss was compensated by the birth of my son Aryan and daughter Suhana. I believe they're my parents. In comparison to them, I behave childishly. My 13-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son behave like my mother and father. They're not my weakness. I love them a lot and give them a lot. I'll give them so much that by the time they are adults they wouldn't want anything. — Shahrukh Khan

Dear John - It will be many years before you understand fully what a great man your father was. His loss is a deep personal tragedy for all of us, but I wanted you particularly to know that I share your grief - You can always be proud of him - Affectionately Lyndon B. Johnson The second was a little longer. Himself the father of two girls, he had been particularly fond of the President's daughter. THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON Friday Night 7:30 November 22, 1963 Dearest Caroline - Your father's death has been a great tragedy for the Nation, as well as for you, and I wanted you to know how much my thoughts are of you at this time. He was a wise and devoted man. You can always be proud of what he did for his country - Affectionately Lyndon B. Johnson — William Manchester

He remembers an afternoon not long after his wife's arrest when he caught himself avoiding puddles of rainwater on the streets. When he realised what he was doing it struck him as ridiculous and even reprehensible that he was still prey to such petty concerns. He began deliberately splashing through all the biggest puddles, as if to show some higher power how little he cared about anything anymore. His daughter copied him. Skipping and dancing as if she and the rain shared a secret complicity. — Glenn Haybittle

Grief was dagger-shaped and sharp and pointed inward. It was made of fresh loss and old sorrow. Rendered and forged and sometimes polished. Irene Finney had taken her daughter's death and to that sorrow she'd added a long life of entitlement and disappointment, of privilege and pride. And the dagger she'd fashioned was taking a brief break from slashing her insides, and was now pointed outward. — Louise Penny

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

What it has meant to stay alive when my daughter did not. What it has meant to suffer a heartbeat after carrying the weight and form of her inside my body, wedged just beneath that fist-shaped muscle. — Lidia Yuknavitch

No, it really isn't, but trust me, getting divorced and having to start over is the least in life that isn't fair. I had to watch the parents of a way too young girl realize that their daughter died for no other reason than people can't figure out how to be nice to each other. It isn't that hard, just be nice and people might not have to suffer needlessly, but that isn't the world we live in, so young girls die. That isn't fair, Mom. People falling out of love is vicious and it sucks, but there are far worse things you could be going through. I know that sounds harsh but it's very true. — Jay Crownover

She remembers blood.
A fine mist which goes deep into her lungs, over her skin and through the air. She remembers a desert at dusk. The sky indigo blue and the fire bright, so bright that she can see everything. Near the fire, in the night, all she knows is chaos wrapped in crimson. All is death and nightmare with a single solitary dancer who smiles cruelly as he moves. He is power and darkness. He is man and beast, silver coin eyes and that face, those claws and the agony of loss.
Time stretches wide; seconds like vast eons swallow up her world. Vince is dead, his mother, his brother and her small son ripped apart and gushing as he/it moves. She is screaming, a howl of agony beyond words, primal and wordless. Still he moves, faster than air, faster than she could ever be. Blood drips from her face as she grunts, running with her lungs on fire and her last remaining hope wrapped in her arms. — Amanda M. Lyons

H.L. Mencken once said that Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be having a good time. As she looked down at her dead child, Mary Beth realized that the unbearable sense of loss she felt was tempered by gratitude and a kind of relief. There would be no more boyfriends now, no more weekend parties. Ruby would remain pure forever, and for that her mother was deeply grateful. Catholicism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be having a good time ... with your daughter. — Anna Quindlen

Her question was clear-
"Father, where does the Loss reside?"
In the sighs?
Cheeks with tears wiped?
A lost appetite?
Owning a room confined?
Or in the smiles all falsified?

Thus, the Father decide,
It is no matter to hide, he replied-
"I think its deep inside,
Probably,
In the layers of your soul,
Where the body provides it,
Ample food to be-
Magnified, multiplied, intensified.
But once you clarify,
That its not to be occupied inside,
It starves of supplies,
And dies.

So child, when there is loss,
Make sure you refuse to invite it inward,
And absolutely never make it your lifelong parasite. — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

My idea for 'BoneMan's Daughters' came from the loss of my own daughter when she left home to live with a monster at age 18. I wanted to throttle the man, but she was in love, so all I could do was hope, pray and cry. — Ted Dekker

I still know this place and its people to the marrow of their bones, to their soft, unguarded core, which had once sustained my own life, yet I am as much of an outsider here as I am on the other side of the world, in my adopted country. The truth is that there is no bridge between the two lives - the past and the present - that would conveniently span the memory of loss and the promise of an onward search. There is only a wound, the inner divide of exile. A daughter of an anatomy professor, I should have known that sliced hearts do not become whole, that split souls do not mend. Along with all those who left their countries for other shores, I belong in neither land. — Elena Gorokhova

A mother's death also means the loss of the consistent, supportive family system that once supplied her with a secure home base, she then has to develop her self-confidence and self-esteem through alternate means. Without a mother or mother-figure to guide her, a daughter also has to piece together a female self-image of her own. — Hope Edelman

I was lonely, deadly lonely. And I was to find out then, as I found out so many times, over and over again, that women especially are social beings, who are not content with just husband and family, but must have a community, a group, an exchange with others. Young and old, even in the busiest years of our lives, we women especially are victims of the long loneliness.
It was years before I woke up without that longing for a face pressed against my breast, an arm about my shoulder. The sense of loss was there.
I never was so unhappy, never felt so great the sense of loneliness. No matter how many times I gave up mother, father, husband, brother, daughter, for His sake, I had to do it over again.
Tamar is partly responsible for the title of this book in that when I was beginning it she was writing me about how alone a mother of young children always is. I had also just heard from an old woman who lived a long and full life, and she too spoke of her loneliness — Dorothy Day

Those who are close to us, when they die, divide our world. There is the world of the living, which we finally, in one way or another, succumb to, and then there is the domain of the dead that, like an imaginary friend (or foe) or a secret concubine, constantly beckons, reminding us of our loss. What is memory but a ghost that lurks at the corners of the mind, interrupting our normal course of life, disrupting our sleep in order to remind us of some acute pain or pleasure, something silenced or ignored? We miss not only their presence, or how they felt about us, but ultimately how they allowed us to feel about ourselves or them. (prologue) — Azar Nafisi

You're not going to have the police force representing the black and brown community, if they've spent the last 30 years busting every son and daughter and father and mother for every piddling drug offense that they've ever done, thus creating a mistrust in the community. But at the same time, you should be able to talk about abuses of power, and you should be able to talk about police brutality and what, in some cases, is as far as I'm concerned, outright murder and outright loss of justice without the police organization targeting you in the way that they have done me. — Quentin Tarantino

From Taking Your Clothes to the Salvation Army:
Okay, so strangers will be grateful for this, will wear the socks to keep their feet warm, blow their noses in your handkerchiefs, pull up the shorts, tuck in the size large shirts (too small for our boys, too big for our daughter), and bits of you will be out there, engaging in a life you no longer have. — Jane Yolen

To be a mother is to live in fear. Fear of death, of sickness, of loss, of accidents, of strangers, of the Black Man, or simply those small everyday things that somehow manage to hurt us most: the look of impatience, the angry word, the missed bedtime story, the forgotten kiss, the terrible moment when a mother ceases to be the center of her daughter's world and becomes — Joanne Harris

Seeing his daughter slowly die, coupled with his infinite sadness and misery, the clockmaker becomes a recluse to the tower of the castle and begins to build something behind closed doors, not even his daughter knows what he's up to. For five years, she only sees him briefly at meal-times before locking himself up in the tower once again..."

"...Did he have a bathroom in the tower?"

"Yes, Jack. A big one! En-suite! Power-shower and spa! Where was I!? — Jonathan Dunne

Although in my life the level of loss has never reached the extremes it does in 'The Winter People,' I certainly can identify with being both a daughter longing for her mother and being a mother who is almost scared by the intensity of her love for her daughter. — Jennifer McMahon

What an awful thing then, being there in our house together with our daughter gone, trying to be equal to so many sudden orders of sorrow, any one of which alone would have wrenched us from our fragile orbits around each other. — Paul Harding

There are so many things to grieve ... All the dogs & cats & birds & snakes we have loved & lost, & old lovers, but what else? ... it took me forever to see that one of them was my own daughter, my baby, a young woman I thought of only as a girl, a child, & there she was, suddenly a woman, & I felt this ache gnaw at me as if I hadn't eaten in a year ... I stood there watching my daughter gesture & move & laugh with the grace of a grown-up, & I just started crying like a baby. It wasn't unlike the same type of sorrow we all feel when we realize something we once had that was very precious is not longer there. That it is forever lost, changed, deceased. Like a baby, gone, except in your memory ... My own daughter is now a woman. I get it. Another passage, another form of loss, another reason to grieve, another part of this life process. — Kris Radish