Quotes & Sayings About Loved One's Illness

I wanted some assurances that my life would never again be torn apart like that, that I would never again suffer the pain of watching my loved one destroyed by his own hand. And with that one telephone message I realized, in a brutal, final way that so long as I was with Flynn I would never be protected from the horror of suicide. That he would always be capable of stopping his medication, always be capable of lying to cover his illness, always be capable of swallowing forty pills and lying down beside his girlfriend to die. — Tabitha Suzuma

... things such as losing a job, the death of a loved one, divorce, bankruptcy, illness. Once you have handled any of those things, you emerge a much stronger person. — Susan Jeffers

When I was a girl I loved fevers and flus and the muzzy feeling of a head cold, all these states carrying with them the special accoutrements of illness, the thermometer with its lovely line of red mercury, the coolness of ice chips pressed to a sweaty forehead, and best of all, a distant mother coming to your bedside with tea. — Lauren Slater

We don't have to take things so personally. We take things to heart that we have no business taking to heart. For instance, saying "If you loved me you wouldn't drink" to an alcoholic makes as much sense as saying "If you loved me, you wouldn't cough" to someone who has pneumonia. Pneumonia victims will cough until they get appropriate treatment for their illness. Alcoholics will drink until they get the same. When people with a compulsive disorder do whatever it is they are compelled to do, they are not saying they don't love you - they are saying they don't love themselves. — Melody Beattie

From the cover blurb on the University of Wisconsin Press edition, writer unknown:

Discussing memoirs, diaries, collaborative narratives, photo documentaries, essays, and other forms of life writing, G. Thomas Couser shows that these books are not primarily records of medical conditions; they are a means for individuals to recover their bodies (or those of loved ones) from marginalization and impersonal medical discourse. Responding to the recent growth of illness and disability narratives in the United States.... — G. Thomas Couser

We know Roger Ebert loved the 'Sun-Times' and his career as a newspaper columnist. But ironically, it was his illness and losing his voice that caused him to explore another venue. — Bill Kurtis

Besides, wouldn't it be wonderful if no one ever had to worry about the random cruelty of fatal illness or the woes of old age attacking them or their loved ones? — Joan D. Vinge

Take any emotion - love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions - if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them - you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. "But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, 'All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment'. — Mitch Albom

It has to be emphasized that if the pain were readily describable most of the countless sufferers from this ancient affliction would have been able to confidently depict for their friends and loved ones (even their physicians) some of the actual dimensions of their torment, and perhaps elicit a comprehension that has been generally lacking; such incomprehension has usually been due not to a failure of sympathy but to the basic inability of healthy people to imagine a form of torment so alien to everyday experience. — William Styron

I convinced myself it was all going to be better than okay once I left him. I had at one time loved him with my whole heart. I'd spent the last year overcoming pain, regret, illness, and tried to rediscover myself as I dated men who weren't good for me just to prove to him that I could. In retrospect, I hadn't wanted, nor needed, any men - I simply hadn't realized it. I mindlessly thought I wasn't alright if I didn't have someone. It had hurt my pride that he'd moved on so quickly. — Alesa Teague

Grief is NOT a mental illness or an emotional disorder. Anyone who tells you otherwise has never experienced it for themselves. — Rebecca McNutt

Playing someone who has a mental illness, the responsibility to not stuff it up is really strong. You have to get it right. Not just for the people who are sufferers, but for the people who care about them - their loved ones. — Debra Lawrance

Most people live in fear of some terrible event changing their lives, the death of a loved one or a serious illness. For the chronically ill, this terrible event has already happened, and we have been let in on an amazing secret: You survive. You adapt, and your life changes, but in the end you go on, with whatever compromises you have been forced to make, whatever losses you have been forced to endure. You learn to balance your fears with the simple truth that you must go on living. — Jamie Weisman

I think Hell exists on Earth. It's a psychological state, or it can be a physical state. People who have severe mental illness are in Hell. People who have lost a loved one are in Hell. I think there are all kinds of different hells. It's not a place you go to after you die. — Al Franken

While he can interact with others who have no idea that anything is wrong, Ron lives without spontaneity, going through the motions, doing what he thinks people expect him to do, glad that he is able to at least appear normal throughout the day and maintain a job. He studied drama briefly while in college, and remains enamored of Shakespeare and literature, but an emerging self-consciousness eventually robbed him of his ability to act. Now he feels as if all of his life is an act - just an attempt to maintain the status quo.

Recalling literature he once loved, he sometimes pictures himself as Camus's Meursault, in The Stranger: an emotionless character who plods through life in a meaningless universe with apathy and indifference. He's tired of living
this way but terrified of death. — Daphne Simeon

So whenever any kind of disaster strikes, or something goes seriously "wrong" - illness, disability, loss of home or fortune or of a socially defined identity, breakup of a close relationship, death or suffering of a loved one, or your own impending death - know that there is another side to it, that you are just one step away from something incredible: a complete alchemical transmutation of the base metal of pain and suffering into gold. That one step is called surrender. — Eckhart Tolle

My problem is I love sex. No joking I really love sex. Life without sex is unbearable for me. As a child my mum says I loved men and hated women. I use to smile at men when I was in the pram and offer them lollipops or sweeties. I guess it is in my genes, my little weakness. I can live without the Valium and Vodka but not my sex. To me my choice is simple men or Paradise and I love them both. I cannot make that choice. It is like there is some evil force driving me to flirt and sleep around. No one man has ever been enough for me and now I have to live like a nun in rehab. I am not bold I am just misunderstood. No, don't laugh it is an illness and an exhausting one I am so tired, so very tired. — Annette J. Dunlea

Waves of ice cold shock swept over Theo.
Mrs. Dietrich, the woman who fed him chocolate cookies every time she pulled a sliver from his finger, the woman who'd tended him through every sickness and illness he'd had, the woman he loved as much as his own mother: a war spy and traitor.
Impossible!
"You think your mom is a spy?" He said the words slowly, not quite believing they came from his mouth. "For Germany? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. — Jess Schira

Engel's biopsychosocial model proposed that psychological and social factors could either protect a person from illness or increase his or her susceptibility to it. Such factors include a person's beliefs and attitudes, how supported and loved a person feels by family and friends, the psychological and environmental stresses to which one is exposed, and personal health behaviors. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

Looking after a very sick child was the Olympics of parenting. — Chris Cleave

For too many of us, it is only when adversity strikes that living for Christ becomes a priority: a sudden crisis such as a life-threatening illness, the death of a loved one, or the loss of a job or income reminds us that each day is precious, and only then do we begin to (re)evaluate our existence. But why is there no sense of urgency or accountability when God blesses us with an event that reveals the purpose of our soul? — Angela Monique Crudupt

From personal experience, I completely agree that it is often easier to go for monotone sadness. When I was starting out, I wrote a gazillion short stories that ran the gamut of human suffering - drug addiction, child abuse, terminal illness, loved ones dying by all manner of misfortune, etc. In hindsight, it's clear that I mistook the power of the situation for the power of the story. — Anthony Marra

America is the only high income nation without a paid family leave program. This means that if you or a family member gets sick, there is no guarantee that you can take the time you need to take care of yourself or your loved one, leaving already vulnerable families in the position of making hard decisions in cases of illness. — Kirsten Gillibrand

When you go through a long illness, certainly one of cancer, there's a certain release from it and relief that it has come to an end, because the suffering can be unbearable, as opposed to an abrupt stop to life when they go out the door and there's a loved one who never comes home because of some accident. — Pierce Brosnan

He loved the idea that he was mentally ill," said his daughter Monica, "and hated the idea he was an alcoholic" - that is, bipolar disorder was a bona fide illness, while alcoholism smacked of a shameful personal failing. — Blake Bailey

Three, 300, or 3,000 - these are the number of unknown days, a week, a year, or a decade, each far too precious little and yet, poignantly too much at the same time, to see an irrevocably declined loved one languish and suffer. That fear-ridden, irreversible release lingers in the doorway, but hesitates for reasons we don't understand, leaving us to weep with a mixture of angst and gratitude all at the same time. It is finally ushered all the way in, to comfort and carry our loved one to that Better Place. When the time finally comes, we can be enveloped in a warm cloak of long-awaited acceptance and peace that eases our own pain. It quiets the grief which has moaned inside of us, at least some, every single one of those bittersweet days, weeks... or years. — Connie Kerbs

The worse illness of our time, is that so many people have to suffer from never being loved — Princess Diana

Once my loved one accepted the diagnosis, healing began for the entire family, but it took too long. It took years. Can't we, as a nation, begin to speed up that process? We need a national campaign to destigmatize mental illness, especially one targeted toward African Americans. The message must go on billboards and in radio and TV public service announcements. It must be preached from pulpits and discussed in community forums. It's not shameful to have a mental illness. Get treatment. Recovery is possible. — Bebe Moore Campbell

Eventually my mother suffered a complete breakdown, and the court orders were finally signed. They took her to the State Mental Hospital at Kalamazoo. My mother remained in the same hospital at Kalamazoo for about 26 years.
My last visit, when I knew I would never come to see her again-there-was in 1952. I was twenty-seven. My brother Philbert had told me that on his last visit, she had recognized him somewhat. "In spots" he said.
But she didn't recognize me at all.
She stared at me. She didn't know who I was.
Her mind, when I tried to talk, to reach her, was somewhere else. I asked, "Mama, do you know what day it is?"
She said, staring, "All the people have gone."
I can't describe how I felt. The woman who had brought me into the world, and nursed me, and advised me, and chastised me, and loved me, didn't know me.
It was as if I was trying to walk up the side of a hill of feathers."
-Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X — Malcolm X

He always thought that Touie's long illness would somehow prepare him for her death. He always imagined that grief anf guilt, if they followed, would be more clear-edged, more defined, more finite. Instead they seem like weather, like clouds constantly re-forming into new shapes, blown by nameless, unidentifiable winds. — Julian Barnes

Mrs. Allan's face was not the face of the girlbride whom the minister had brought to Avonlea five years before. It had lost some of its bloom and youthful curves, and there were fine, patient lines about eyes and mouth. A tiny grave in that very cemetery accounted for some of them; and some new ones had come during the recent illness, now happily over, of her little son. But Mrs. Allan's dimples were as sweet and sudden as ever, her eyes as clear and bright and true; and what her face lacked of girlish beauty was now more than atoned for in added tenderness and strength. — L.M. Montgomery

Oh the benison of it, she thought, for she seemed to need comfort now, not only because she was tired after the journey and far away from John, but because she had admitted to herself that she loved him, had let her love sweep over her like a kind of illness, 'giving in' to flu, conscious only of the present moment. — Barbara Pym

I loved the idea of a subversive world where mental illness was defined as just another version of normal, and education was how you made your way in the world, not something that began or ended. — Heather Sellers

Why this girl? Why had this girl crawled right under his skin and made an uncomfortable home there? Why did he want to make things good for her, to see her smile, to make her face
and her voice make all those interesting shapes and noises? Why did he want to stay up late with her when he knew she should be sleeping, just to hear her talk about maths and politics and the
state of the world?
This was not Quentin. Quentin did not like skinny girls. He didn't like serious girls. And he really hated bossy girls.
Quentin loved curvy, fun, uncomplicated girls; girls who laughed at his jokes and took off their bras when they danced on tables. If they wore bras at all. Yet here he was, washing up and mopping and feeling like five kinds of an arsehole over hurting the feelings of some skinny, serious, bossy girl. — Ros Baxter

Depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, and it is not cured by medication. Depression may not even be an illness at all. Often, it can be a normal reaction to abnormal situations. Poverty, unemployment, and the loss of loved ones can make people depressed, and these social and situational causes of depression cannot be changed by drugs. — Irving Kirsch

If the whole world seems like it's against you, it helps to know that you've still got home. A safe place. It just takes one person - a teacher, a friend, a parent. If I didn't have you and Dad, if you hadn't made it so clear you loved me as much as you did, or if you'd said, 'yeah, why don't you do it, and put yourself out of our misery, just shut up,' I would have killed myself. I really would have. I spent most of those days wishing I were dead anyway, and what always stopped me was the fact that doing so would destroy the lives of the only people who ever cared about me. — Nenia Campbell

Missing Alina was worse than a terminal illness. At least when you were terminal you knew the pain was going to end eventually. But there was no light at the end of my tunnel. Grief was going to devour me, day into night, night into day, and although I might feel like I was dying from it, might even wish I was, I never would. I was going to have to walk around with a hole in my heart forever. I was going to hurt for my sister until the day I died. If you don't know what I mean or you think I'm being melodramatic, then you've never really loved anyone. — Karen Marie Moning

It is not the darkness of shadows: one that follows you, haunts you, terrifies you.
Instead, it consumes you, becomes you, weighs you down.
It IS you.
It is comforting. Familiar.
I have walked with it. Eaten with it. Loved with it. Smiled with it.
Yet I feel it destroying me.
Like cancer.
But I can't remove it. It stays inside of me, taunting me to kill it, myself, but it does not realize that this seduction keeps me alive. — Shannon Mullen

Although your decision to die is firm, your decision to become a god has caused you to suffer. You suffered, wondering why you couldn't cure Magdalia's illness, wondering why you weren't capable of saving her. All you wanted to do was protect your only sister, wasn't that it? Not in heaven, but here on Earth. You wanted to make Lady Maldaria happy more than anything else, didn't you? And so now, to avoid the guilt of your loved one dying at your expense, you're willing to die yourself. You've already come to this realization. You know you aren't god. You're just a fragile human being who's capable of feeling pain and having doubts. Go back to being an ordinary man and start all over again for the sake of those who look up to you.
-Kenshin — Nobuhiro Watsuki

[EDITORS' NOTE: For support in dealing with the illness or loss of a loved one due to an illness, call Kids Konnected at 800-899-2866.] — Jack Canfield

It was during those years that I discovered that loving [my father] was like sticking a blade into my own heart. It got me nowhere, except awake in the middle of the night, recalling the years when my father was the strongest, the smartest, the funniest, and I lay curled in my bed, wondering why I had been cheated out of a father who loved me, and one I could love in return. — Alison Singh Gee