Loved One Gone Quotes & Sayings

Though loss did not pass from one person to another liker a baton; it just formed a bigger and bigger pool of carriers. And, she thought, scratching the coarseness of the horse's mane, it did not leave once lodged, did it, simply changed form and asked repeatedly for attention and care, as each year revealed a new knot to cry out and consider - smaller, sure, but never gone. — Aimee Bender

What do you do when you lose a loved one too quickly? When you have no time to prepare before, suddenly, that soul is gone? — Mitch Albom

My father died of brain cancer in 1991. I do not know anyone whose life has not been touched by the loss of a loved one to cancer. I wrote my book 'Gracefully Gone' about my father's fight and my struggle growing up with an ill parent. I wrote it to help others know they are not alone in this all-too-often insurmountable war against cancer. — Alicia Coppola

Are you okay with what we ordered?" Angeline asked him. "You didn't pipe up with any requests."
Neil shook his head, face stoic. He kept his dark hair in a painfully short and efficient haircut. It was the kind of no-nonsense thing the Alchemists would've loved. "I can't waste time quibbling over trivial things like pepperoni and mushrooms. If you'd gone to my school in Devonshire, you'd understand. For one of my sophomore classes, they left us alone on the moors to fend for ourselves and learn survival skills. Spend three days eating twigs and heather, and you'll learn not to argue about any food coming your way."
Angeline and Jill cooed as though that was the most rugged, manly thing they'd ever heard. Eddie wore an expression that reflected what I felt, puzzling over whether this guy was as serious as he seemed or just some genius with swoon-worthy lines. — Richelle Mead

I still loved Granny. It flowed out of my chest. With Granny gone, where would my love go? — Jessica Maria Tuccelli

But surely Uncle Akbar could not be dead as they were dead? There must be something indestructible - something that remained of men who had walked and talked with one and told one stories, men whom one had loved and looked up to. But where had it gone? It was all very puzzling, and he did not understand. — M.M. Kaye

You obsess (but of course you obsess) until the joy is gone from that thing you'd loved, until your fury overwhelms your passion, until you no longer know how to sit with your back against a tree and write poetry that no one will ever see. — Beth Kephart

He loved how much they loved each other. It was the thing he thought about when he woke up scared in the middle of the night. Not that they loved him - they were his parents, they had to love him. That they loved each other. They didn't have to do that. None of his friends' parents were still together, and in every case, that seemed like the number one thing that had gone wrong with his friends' lives. But Park's parents loved each other. They kissed each other on the mouth, no matter who was watching. What were the chances you'd ever meet someone like that? he wondered. Someone you could love forever, someone who would forever love you back? And what did you do when that person was born half a world away? The math seemed impossible. How did his parents get so lucky? — Rainbow Rowell

She did not know how to explain what happened, how everything has changed in just one day, how someone she loved so dearly could be there one minute, and the next minute: gone. — Celeste Ng

If ever you have had a romantic, uncalculating friendship, - a boundless worship and belief in some hero of your soul, - if ever you have so loved, that all cold prudence, all selfish worldly considerations have gone down like drift-wood before a river flooded with new rain from heaven, so that you even forgot yourself, and were ready to cast your whole being into the chasm of existence, as an offering before the feet of another, and all for nothing, - if you awoke bitterly betrayed and deceived, still give thanks to God that you have had one glimpse of heaven. The door now shut will open again. Rejoice that the noblest capability of your eternal inheritance has been made known to you; treasure it, as the highest honor of your being, that ever you could so feel, -that so divine a guest ever possessed your soul. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

One I love is taken from me, we will never walk together over the fields of earth, never hear the birds in the morning. Oh, how I have lived with you and loved you, and now you are gone away. Gone where I cannot follow, until I have finished all my days. — Victoria Hanley

We loved - and it has all gone, somewhere...
We loved - and now our love is frozen,
and now it lies, one wing spread out, raising
its little feet - a dead sparrow on the damp
gravel... But we loved... we flew... — Vladimir Nabokov

Memories are beautiful things, Boy. When the person that ya loved is gone, when the happy time is over, then ya've still got yer memories. Thank God fer this special gift of His that lets ya sorta live yer experiences again and again. S'pose there ain't no price one would settle on fer the worth of memories. — Janette Oke

Graves aren't for the dead. They're for the loved ones the dead leave behind them. Once those loved ones have gone, once all the lives that have touched the occupant of any given grave had ended, then the grave's purpose was fulfilled and ended. I suppose if you looked at it that way, one might as well decorate one's grave with an enormous statue or a giant temple. It gave people something to talk about, at least. Although, following that logic, I would need to have a roller coaster, or maybe a Tilt-A-Whirl constructed over my own grave when I died. Then even after my loved ones had moved on, people could keep having fun for years and years. Of course, I'd need a slightly larger plot. — Jim Butcher

It's not that people don't know when they'll die. It's that they don't seem to know they'll die. — Raheel Farooq

Amy Martin (ladysky) and Daniel Baciagalupo had a month to spend on Charlotte Turner's island in Georgian Bay; it was their wilderness way of getting to know each other before their life together in Toronto began. We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly
as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth
the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.
Little Joe was gone, but not a day passed in Daniel Baciagalupo's life when Joe wasn't loved or remembered. The cook had been murdered in his bed, but Dominic Baciagalupo had had the last laugh on the cowboy. Ketchum's left hand would lvie forever in Twisted River, and Six-Pack had known what to do with the rest of her old friend — John Irving

When I was a kid, I just read and read. We were lucky enough to have gone to England and had a whole bunch of Penguin Puffins books, like The Land of Green Ginger by Noel Langley, which is hilarious. I would love to be able to write a book like that, but I don't know that I have a humorous bone in my body when it comes to writing. Once on a Time by A.A. Milne. I read a lot of old, old fantasy stuff. The Carbonelbooks by Barbara Sleigh. Then when I got a little older I loved Zilpha Keatley Snyder. I was a big fan of romance and when I got a little bit older I would read a Harlequin romance or a Georgette Heyer novel and then David Copperfield, and then another genre book and then Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy. I was that kind of reader. One book that I loved was I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I loved voice and that book had it in spades. And then of course I grew into loving Jane Eyre. — Franny Billingsley

At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. what we should fear and dread, of course, is that we wont stop loving them, even after they are dead and gone. for i still love you with the whole of my heart. i still love you. and sometimes, my friend, the love that i have and cant give to you, crushed the breast from my chest. soemtimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep. — Gregory David Roberts

I hate Alzheimer's. It is one of the most awful things because, here is a loved one, this is the woman or man that you have loved for 20, 30, 40 years, and suddenly, that person is gone. They're gone. They are gone. — Pat Robertson

I was sent here to be alive. To breathe and sweat and thirst and sometimes cry. And everything that happened to me, everything both great and small, was something I had to learn! There was room for it in the infinite mind of the Lord and I had to seek the lesson in it, no matter how hard it was to find. I almost laughed. It was so simple, so beautiful. If only I could keep it in my mind, this understanding, this moment - never forget it as one day followed another, never forget it no matter what happened, never forget it no matter what came to pass. Oh, yes, I would grow up, and there would come a time when I would leave Nazareth, surely. I would go out into the world and do what it was I was meant to do. Yes. But for now? All was clear. My fear was gone. It seemed the whole world was holding me. Why had I ever thought I was alone? I was in the embrace of the earth, of those who loved me no matter what they thought or understood, of the very stars. "Father," I said. "I am your child. — Anne Rice

If you've ever read one of those articles that asks notable people to list their favorite books, you may have been impressed or daunted to see them pick Proust or Thomas Mann or James Joyce. You might even feel sheepish about the fact that you reread Pride and Prejudice or The Lord of the Rings, or The Catcher in the Rye or Gone With the Wind every couple of years with some much pleasure. Perhaps, like me, you're even a little suspicious of their claims, because we all know that the books we've loved best are seldom the ones we esteem the most highly - or the ones we'd most like other people to think we read over and over again. — Laura Miller

She sees only what's gone, I see only what's stayed the same. Her hair is no longer halfway down her back or pulled up in a French pleat; nowadays it is cut close to her skull and the grey is allowed to show.
Those peasanty frocks she used to wear have given way to cardigans and well-cut trousers. Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it's still the eyes we look at, isn't it? That's where we found the other person, and find them still. The same eyes that were in the same head when we first met, slept together, married, honeymooned, joint-mortgaged, shopped, cooked and holidayed, loved one another and had a child together. And were the same when we separated.
But it's not just the eyes. The bone structure stays the same, as do the instinctive gestures, the many ways of being herself. And her way, even after all this time and distance, of being with me. — Julian Barnes

Doing good seemed barely worth it if he couldn't keep his own family safe. Maybe he'd gone soft after all. In his head, the only answer was murder and plenty of it. The old way. The way he knew. If he stacked enough dead bodies on top of one another, no one would see past them to find the ones he loved. — Debra Anastasia

As I looked at them, I found my mind rushing ahead to the wedding planned for the first part of September, and I wondered what flowers would be available. That was another decision that had to be made. Oh, my! Was there no end to them? It seemed that ever since Wynn had asked me to become his wife, I had been making one decision after the other - some big and some not-so-big. As my thoughts turned to Wynn, I smiled to myself. How fortunate I was to be engaged to marry such a man. He was everything a girl could ever desire - his height, his bearing, his smile, his quiet self-assurance, his caring. And he loved me! I would have gone on and on daydreaming but Kathleen interrupted me. — Janette Oke

Two weeks. Everything you love, own, and cherish, can be gone, liquidated, and lost forever in two weeks. Give or take a day. — J. Lincoln Fenn

It's no different from losing a loved one," he said. "You grieve, but then you have no choice but to go on living your life. You find a way to be happy again. It's not impossible. You just have to decide when you're ready to accept that they're gone. — Julianne MacLean

This book is for anyone who has ever lost a loved one, for anyone who has woken up crying and gone to bed the same way, for anyone who has had to learn that it's okay to not be okay. Surviving isn't strength, it's continuing to breathe one day at a time; strength is learning to live despite the pain. — Jasinda Wilder

Many a man has cherished for years as his hobby some vague shadow of an idea too meaningless to be positively false; he has nevertheless passionately loved it has made it his companion by day and by night and has given to it his strength and his life leaving all other occupations for its sake....and then he has waked up one morning to find it gone...and the essence of his life along with it. — Charles Peirce

You will never be skeleton, when I am in ghost. — Anthony Liccione

A person is like a candle... And in any second that candle and be blown. Live the moment with your loved one before its too late, before the candle is blown and its gone forever with no trace. — Grace

While these thoughts crossed his mind, Margaret clung to the doorpost to steady herself: but a film came over her eyes - he was only just in time to catch her. 'Mother - mother!' cried he; 'Come down - they are gone, and Miss Hale is hurt!' He bore her into the dining-room, and laid her on the sofa there; laid her down softly, and looking on her pure white face, the sense of what she was to him came upon him so keenly that he spoke it out in his pain:
'Oh, my Margaret - my Margaret! no one can tell what you are to me! Dead - cold as you lie there, you are the only woman I ever loved! Oh, Margaret - Margaret!' Inarticulately as he spoke, kneeling by her, and rather moaning than saying the words, he started up, ashamed of himself, as his mother came in. She saw nothing, but her son a little paler, a little sterner than usual. — Elizabeth Gaskell

Certainly, we all wonder what is beyond, and when you lose a loved one, I think part of the grieving process includes where that person might have gone or if you'll ever see them again. I think it forces you to look up to the sky, to the cosmos. — Jenny Lewis

I'll never forget the crippling headaches Grandpa suffered, the nausea from chemo and radiation. I watched Daddy wrestle with decision after decision, ultimately withholding IV antibiotics to treat the pneumonia that took Grandpa more quickly and far more gently. Barrons is voicing the legitimate question of anyone who's ever agreed not to resuscitate, to cease life-sustaining measures for a loved one, to accept a Stage 4 cancer patient's decision to refuse more chemo, or euthanize a beloved pet. Throughout the caretaker experience, your loved one's presence is intense and exquisitely poignant and painful, then all the sudden they're gone and you discover their absence is even more intense and exquisitely poignant and painful. You don't know how to walk or breathe when they're no longer there. And how could you? Your world revolved around them. — Karen Marie Moning

I know these are only dreams. I know these days are long past. I wake to a dream in which Hammer's breath has stopped, and mine with it, and hearts have gone to a quiet sunny meadow with the sweetest little cottage in the middle, with a millwheel and a stream. Our bodies will lie tangled until they become earth, like roses twining so closely there is no beginning and no end, and only the shades of beauty that were their growing.
Every dream I ever had as a child has come true, simply because Hammer loved me. Perhaps this one will too. — Amy Lane

I was so sentimental about you I'd break any one's heart for you. My, I was a damned fool. I broke my own heart, too. It's broken and gone. Everything I believe in and everything I cared about I left for you because you were so wonderful and you loved me so much that love was all that mattered. Love was the greatest thing, wasn't it? — Ernest Hemingway,

My dreams were always the same I could see myself laughing . I was standing somewhere in a forest a raindrop rolled down a branch and fell on my nose . My hair was a sparkling red color and I was wearing a white flowing ball gown made from silk. I could feel him the one I loved staring at me intensely . His eyes as gold as the sun . I could hear him saying my love Fleur .. you are everything to me. His fingertips lightly shivering as he touched my face beckoning for me to come closer. I don't know what I would do if I lost you . "Are you sure you want to be with me?" My body protested as I fought for him to stay but he never did. As soon as I woke up his presence was gone. — Isabella Kruger

A loved one from us has gone, A voice we love is stilled. A place is vacant in our home, Which never will be filled. Estelle Woodhouse, 1898-1987 — Jan Karon

When I was in the Everneath, I thought about Jack every day. Every minute. Even after I'd forgotten his name, the image of his face made me feel whole again. Was Jack the reason I'd survived? Were our ties to the Surface what somehow kept us whole?
The one problem in the anchor theory was Meredith.She had a connection with her mom,yet she didn't survive. But then the more I thought about it, the more I realized Mrs. Jenkins didn't have a similar connection to Meredith. She forgot about Meredith the second the Feed began.
Then it hit me.Orpheus didn't forget about Eurydice.He loved her the entire time she was gone. Maybe the attachment between Forfeit and anchor worked only when it went both ways.
The drinking fountain next to me shuddered to life as a flash of intuition hit me.
I knew now that Jack never forgot about me.He'd never stopped loving me.He was the anchor that saved me.
And now he was gone. — Brodi Ashton

The dead sit at our tables long after they have gone. — Mitch Albom

The soldier of Christ is obligated to fight against sin and error. His battle against the Antichrist is prompted by his loved for Christ, and for the salvation of souls. He fights this battle for the salvation of those who have gone astray. His attitude is one of true love. But those who flee from the inevitable battle, and treat irenically those who have gone astray, obfuscating their error and playing down their revolt against God, are, fundamentally, victims of egoism and complacency. — Dietrich Von Hildebrand

I walked out of ... was it 'Stardust?' That thing with the witches? I was so looking forward to it, but I just couldn't handle it, man. Ten minutes in, and I was gone. I didn't have to walk out of 'Transformers 2' because I didn't go. I loved the first 'Transformers.' I loved it, but I heard too many of my friends walked out of the second one. — Sharlto Copley

Last night I saw you in my sleep:
And how your charm of face was changed!
I asked, 'Some love, some faith you keep?'
You answered, 'Faith gone, love estranged.'
Whereat I woke--- a twofold bliss:
Waking was one, but next there came
This other:"Though I felt, for this,
My heart break, I loved on the same. — Robert Browning

I think everyone should read The Girl on The Train, especially if they loved Gone Girl. It's about Rachel, a girl who sees a couple on her commute. Then one day she sees one of the people from the couple kiss another person. The next day they go missing. The story is told by 3 different perspectives, all characters you absolutely can't trust. It's an insane psychological thriller that's seriously addicting and the kind of book you can't put down. — Kyle

He is gone and all we have is this world, here and now. — Alice Hoffman

If 'heartache' sounds exaggerated then surely you have never gone to your garden one rare morning in June to find that the frost, without any perceptible motive, any hope of personal gain, has quietly killed your strawberry blossoms, tomatoes, lima and green beans, corn, squash, cucumbers. A brilliant sun is now smiling at this disaster with an insenstive cheerfulness as out of place as a funny story would be if someone you loved had just died. — Ruth Stout

It was one of those great spring days, it was Sunday, and you knew summer would be coming soon. And I remember that morning Dorrie and I had gone for a walk in the park and come back to the apartment. We were just sort of sitting around and I put on a record of Louie Armstrong, which was music I grew up with, and it was very, very pretty, and I happened to glance over and I saw Dorrie sitting there. And I remember thinking to myself how terrific she was and how much I loved her. And I don't know, I guess it was a combination of everything, the sound of the music, and the breeze, and how beautiful Dorrie looked to me and for one brief moment everything just seemed to come together perfectly and I felt happy, almost indestructible in a way. — Woody Allen

It seemed to Chickadee that those houses held the powers of the world. The ones who built and lived in those houses were making an outsize world. An existence he'd never dreamed of. Almost a spirit world, but one on earth. Chickadee could see that they used up forests of trees in making the houses. He could see that they were pumping up the river and even using up the animals. He thought of the many animals whose dead hides were bound and sold in St. Paul in one day. Everything that the Anishinabeg counted on in life, and loved, was going into this hungry city mouth. This mouth, this city, was wide and insatiable. it would never be satisfied, thought Chickadee dizzily, until everything was gone. — Louise Erdrich

It was a startling revelation, really. How had I gone from infatuation to soul-clenching lust to ... love?
True love defies logic. That's its signature trait.
Funny, people always said love was something that grew in both intensity and depth as you got to know a person, but I was never sure about that. Maybe the love is already there, dormant inside your heart, waiting for "the one" to unlock it. That would certainly explain how I felt; I loved him. I felt like I always had and I always would — Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

He looked down at a tired face that was only fifty-one years old. He looked down and thought dad I feel lots older than you. I was sorry for you dad. Things weren't going well and they never would have gone well for you and it's just as good you're dead. People've got to be quicker and harder these days than you were dad. Goodnight and good-dreams. I won't forget you and I'm not as sorry for you today as I was yesterday. I loved you dad goodnight. — Dalton Trumbo

Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. Love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves it's own mark. To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. — J.K. Rowling

LOVE IS LIKE A DESIGNER FASHION, ENJOY IT WHEN YOU HAVE IT. LET IT GO WHEN IT IS GONE BECAUSE A NEW ONE WILL COME. — Linda Alfiori

Since their first kiss in our kitchen two weeks after my death, I had known that he was - as my sister and I had giggled with our Barbies or while watching Bobby Sherman on TV - her one and only. Samuel had pressed himself into her need and the cement between the two of them had begun to set immediately. They had gone to Temple together, side by side. He had hated it and she had pushed him through. She had loved it and this had allowed him to survive. — Alice Sebold

Me sins are great, and I'll burn for dem. But if ye never believe anyt'in' else, know dat I loved ye more den anyt'in'. Ye were me sanctuary. Me solace in a world gone mad. I'd endure a thousand deat's to go back and ensure ye did not feel one moment of pain. — Nicole Jacquelyn

Neither Doyle nor Sullivan had ever been to visit him at Regina Cleri, and Tip had only come one time and then left after five minutes. To Father Sullivan it was as if this part of his family, these people whom he loved, had all packed up and gone to Africa. — Ann Patchett

I loved the way the burned-out flashcubes of the Kodak Instamatic marked a moment that had passed, one that would now be gone forever except for a picture. — Alice Sebold

From the day after we lose someone, how we lost them doesn't matter. All that matters now is that they're gone, and there's absolutely no more interacting with that person. There's just the memories. And those memories will come pelting at you at random for a while, before you realize it can be beautiful to let them run through you. — Chad Pelley

People would ask, "Why don't you put her in a nursing home?" I always answered, "I feel it is my responsibility, because she's my wife and Heather's mother. I love her and it's my job to take care of her for as long as I physically and mentally can."
Every day, I would rush home at lunch, prepare her something to eat and drive her around a little, too. She loved to ride in the car and that seemed to keep her smiling. By late October, she had really gone down. We were playing Ole Miss in Oxford, in a game that is probably best remembered for David Palmer replacing an injured Jay Barker and putting on a show that had Heisman voters buzzing.
Sadly, what I remember most was getting off the team plane and calling home. Charlotte didn't answer and I began to panic and started calling some of our neighbors. I finally reached one of the neighbors and she went to the house and found Charlotte just staring ahead. I don't think Charlotte ever answered the phone again. — Mal Moore With Steve Townsend

The masters thought they were loved until one day one of their favorites farted loudly while serving dinner and the next day was gone. The very first manifestation of the classless society is the disappearance of the servant class. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Gone, but not forgotten. — Phillip Margolin

I helped Master Crawford, the watchmaker, now that his sight had gone and faded to a thin pinpoint of light. That were my favorite time. I loved the beauty of all them parts working perfectly together, a little world that could be put to rights with the click of gears, like time itself answered to your fingers. There is a beauty to the way things work. Remove one part, add another, you've changed the mechanism — Kelly Link

You will fall in love with someone for one night and one night only. They'll come to you when you need them and be gone in the morning when you don't. At first, this will make you feel empty and you'll try to convince yourself that you could've loved this person for longer than a night, but you can't. Some people are just meant to make cameo appearances, some are destined to be a pithy footnote. That's okay though. Not every person we love has to stick around. Sometimes it's better to leave while you're still ahead. Sometimes it's better to leave before you get unloved. — Ryan O'Connell

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

Was this perhaps life, then? - to have loved one summer in youth and not to have been aware of it until it was over, some sea-wet footprints on the floor and sand in the prints, the fragrance of a woman, soft loving lips in the dusk of a summer night, sea birds; and then nothing more; gone. — Halldor Laxness

They couldn't talk. They were not good talkers, either of them. And once, long ago now, she had bought a notebook for a course. It lay empty and forgotten on the kitchen table until one afternoon, when she had gone out to the shops and he was worried that she would be killed by a bus or by lightning, he opened the notebook and he wrote lines about how he loved her, the way he loved her, about his fucking heart and crap like that, about his body brimful and his scrambled head. All that. She came back from the shops. He left the notebook where it was, and he didn't mention it. And it wasn't until about a week later that he noticed it again, and he flicked it open, and he saw his lines followed by lines from her. She'd written words that she had never said. He sat down. He read them over and over for a long time. Then he wrote a paragraph for her to find. — Keith Ridgway

After you're gone, people will forget your name, no matter how important it was, and your face, no matter how pretty it was, and what you said, no matter how clever any of it sounded.
The things you've done will crumble and fade and the places you once loved, will change and be given new names.
You are only here for one moment and it lasts exactly one lifetime. — Pleasefindthis

It hurts when they're gone. And it doesn't matter if it's slow or fast, whether it's a long drawn-out disease or an unexpected accident. When they're gone the world turns upside down and you're left holding on, trying not to fall off. — Walter Mosley

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

I remember the last season I played. I went home after a ballgame one day, lay down on my bed, and tears came to my eyes. How can you explain that? It's like crying for your mother after she's gone. You cry because you love her. I cried, I guess, because I loved baseball, and I knew I had to leave it. — Willie Mays

He prayed fundamentally as a gesture of love for what had gone and would go and could be loved in no other way. When he prayed he touched his parents, who could not otherwise be touched, and he touched a feeling that we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one another, and out of this Saeed felt it might be possible, in the face of death, to believe in humanity's potential for building a better world. — Mohsin Hamid

Sometimes I replay your dreams in my head to get me by"

My heart cracked. "What dreams?"

"The one where we married and had kids. I used to watch you sleep within your sleep and talk to your belly"

In the room in Fairy, I'd gone there to be with Luke knowing it wasn't real. I'd dreamed we had a normal life with kids. "What did you say?"

"I would tell our child how much I loved you both — Shannon Dermott

Just because the ones we love die (or fall out of our lives or disappear from the spinning of our spheres) does not mean we love them any less or erase them from the deeply etched lines of the maps we have traveled.

We find ways to keep them alive in spirit, with the brutal knowing that they are gone in body.

We can remember; we can feel & this can all be grief & it can all be love, too. — Bryonie Wise

The acid test for any theology is this: Is the God presented one that can be loved, heart, soul, mind, and strength? ... If it fails to set a lovable God
a radiant, happy, friendly, accessible, and totally competent being
before ordinary people, we have gone wrong — Dallas Willard

My heart was oaken before you set it on fire. It will continue to smolder, long after the flame that ignited it has gone. — Natalia Marx

She couldn't quite see herself in it. When they were done, I read the Shakespeare sonnet that begins "Fear no more the heat o' the Sun," partly because it was appropriate to the occasion and one of the most beautiful poems in the language, but also because I hoped it might hide from my loved ones the fact that I myself had nothing to say, that while part of me was here with them on this beloved shore, another part was wandering, as it had been for months, in a barren, uninhabited landscape not unlike the one in my dream. I realized I'd felt like this for a while. Though life had gone on since my mother's death - Kate had gotten married, I'd finally published another book and gone on tour with it - some sort of internal-pause button had been pushed, allowing another part of me, one I'd specifically kept sequestered to deal with my mother, to fall silent. Since her death, Barbara and I had gone through all her things and settled her affairs, but we'd barely spoken of her. — Richard Russo

I felt guilty that I hadn't thought of Kizuki right away, as if I had somehow abandoned him. Back in my room, though, I came to think of it this way: two and a half years have gone by since it happened, and Kizuki is still seventeen years old. Not that this means my memory of him has faded. The things that his death gave rise to are still there, bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they were new. What I want to say is this: I'm going to turn twenty soon. Part of what Kizuki and I shared when we were sixteen and seventeen has already vanished, and no amount of crying is going to bring that back. I can't explain it any better than this, but I think that you can probably understand what I felt and what I am trying to say. — Haruki Murakami

Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th'encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!
So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on.
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!
Meantime, along the narrow rugged path,
Thyself hast trod,
Lead, Saviour, lead me home in childlike faith,
Home to my God.
To rest forever after earthly strife
In the calm light of everlasting life. — John Henry Newman

The thing about losing any loved one, I think, particularly in a long disease, is that you know that other people have gone through it and are going through it, but I think for every person it feels unique. — Patti Davis

I woke up to an ache in my chest, the smell of chocolate, and the sound of the ghost making a racket in the kitchen. Now, I'm not the sort to dwell on doom and sorrow. Life is too short for that. But I should at least try to describe the ache briefly: It is not the kind that comes from eating tacos too late at night. It's the kind that comes from being left behind. I think my heart is smart enough to know there's a place I should be filling with new memories, new jokes, and wondrous adventures with the one person I loved most of all. But that person is gone now. And so, my heart has a giant hole. I call it The Big Empty. — Natalie Lloyd

As I watched Bill, waiting with apparent calm for death to come to him, I had a flash of him as I'd known him: the first vampire I'd ever met, the first man I'd ever gone to bed with, the first suitor I'd ever loved. Everything that followed had tainted those memories, but for one moment I saw him clearly, and I loved him again. — Charlaine Harris

If I'd loved my chemistry teacher and my maths teacher, goodness knows what direction my life might have gone in. I remember there was a primary school teacher who really woke me up to the joys of school for about one year when I was ten. He made me interested in things I would otherwise not have been interested in - because he was a brilliant teacher. He was instrumental in making me think learning was quite exciting. — Colin Firth

People would say, 'Boy, I really loved you in Ferris Bueller, and it would really aggravate me. I thought I was a one-trick pony, and people had seen the trick. Now that things have worked out and I've gone on to other things, I'm really pleased that people enjoy it. — Alan Ruck

But now the other half of "us" was gone and, lying there in my shadowy room, I'd be struck with this realization that I had no clue how to be just me again. — Jennifer Brown

Its emptiness is more than the lack of living, breathing beings. It is the unread pages of the many books that reside on the shelves throughout the room I should hot have thought one could tell when books have gone unread, but after the company of Birchwood's well-loved library it is as if I can hear these books whispering, their pages grasping and reaching for an audience. — Michelle Zink

You Tavi," he answered her, putting her mind to rest. "You're his legacy, everything he was, he taught you, passed himself on through you in a father daughter bond. He was very proud of the young woman you've become, and he loved you greatly, he will always live on in your heart. And one day you'll pass on some of what he taught you to others, then he'll continue to live on through them too, that way he'll never be forgotten or truly gone. Every day something you do will remind you of him and you'll remember him with love and affection, that's a great legacy to leave behind Tavi. — Sallyann Phillips

My eyes are bloodshot. I look at my face and I think that I had someone who loved this face. And now he's gone. And now no one loves my face anymore. — Taylor Jenkins Reid

Mama wasn't dead ... exactly. They all said she was, but when Elma was small, she seen Mama creep into her room at night, half-naked, head all bloodied red like when they found her by the well that day, and Elma reckoned dead just meant pretendin' you couldn't move or breathe until nightfall when you got up and walked around like you was free. — Shannon Celebi

Parents are in a position to forgive when they remember two things. One, the child that I am rearing is God's child. God loved the child before I did; He will continue this love long after I am gone. Two, God's method of dealing with sin, even the most destructive kind, is forgiveness. I am not going to be able to improve on God's methods. — Eugene H. Peterson

No one in the family has ever really gotten over Bob's death. We talk of him daily, recounting stories and imagining what his reactions would be to new books and recent events. He remains for my family the perfect model of how you can be gone but ever present in the lives of people who loved you, in the same way that your favorite books stay with you for your entire life, no matter how long it's been since you turned the last page. — Will Schwalbe

The dead are never truly gone. They linger in our minds and hearts and torture us with a malice they were not capable of in life. — Courtney M. Privett

Georg." Deda spoke softly. "Georg." "Yes, Papochka?" Tatiana's father said respectfully. No one loved Deda more than Papa, not even Tatiana. "Georg. You cannot keep the boy out of conscription. You can't." "Of course I can. He is only seventeen." Deda shook his neat gray head. "Exactly - seventeen. They'll take him." The look of trapped fear slid across Papa's face and was gone. "They won't take him, Papochka," said Papa hoarsely. "I don't even know what you're talking about." He was clearly unable to say what he felt: everyone stop talking and let me save my son the only way I know how. Deda sat back against the sofa cushions. — Paullina Simons

All was over in a moment. I had fulfilled my destiny. I was a captive and a slave. I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction! She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don't know what she was - anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her. — Charles Dickens

Not to give away the woman one loved, but to back her up in her mistakes
once they had gone a certain length
that was perhaps chief among the inevitabilities of the abjection of love. — Henry James

He just can't let her go
it's not the sound of her laugh
or the softness of her skin
that he misses the most
it's the way she loved him
like no one ever has
the way she held him
when he was hurting her
the way she felt his pain
like it was her own
and he just wasn't ready
to let all of that go

yet this morning
he opened his eyes
and she was gone — Shelby Leigh

The world didn't end with a whimper or a bang. Your life finished in complete silence. Gone in a blink. And then there was nothing. — F.K. Preston

At that moment he knew what his mother was thinking, and that she loved him. But he knew, too, that to love someone means relatively little; or, rather, that love is never strong enough to find the words befitting it. Thus he and his mother would always love each other silently. And one day she
or he
would die, without ever, all their lives long, having gone farther than this by way of making their affection known. — Albert Camus

She stood beside me for years, or was it a moment? I cannot remember. Maybe I loved her, maybe I didn't. There was a house, and then no house. There were trees, but none remain. When no one remembers, what is there? You, whose moments are gone, who drift like smoke in the afterlife, tell me something, tell me anything. — Mark Strand