My Bereavement Quotes & Sayings

I pulled a dirty black sweatshirt from the laundry basket on my son's floor and tried to drink in his scent, to savor the essence of my sweet boy. I inhaled it long and hard, wanting to permanently implant all of him in my brain, to make him last forever. — Shelley Ramsey

It is the capacity to feel consuming grief and pain and despair that also allows me to embrace love and joy and beauty with my whole heart. I must let it all in. — Anna White

I used to feel afraid of the future, always assuming the worst. But now I've realized that my worst fears have already happened, and I've survived them! I've walked into the fire and made it out alive. Only the loss of a close loved one could have "woken me up" to reality in the same way. — Elizabeth Berrien

For I do not want any one to read my book carelessly. I have suffered too much grief in setting down these memories. Six years have already passed since my friend went away from me, with his sheep. If I try to describe him here, it is to make sure that I shall not forget him. To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

My encounter with desperation while witnessing the death of a precious child changed me, teaching me that although we will have sad times, we can move on, chastened and changed but resilient and hopeful. Laurel showed me one way to live with hope as well as cancer as she thrived even when tumors grew within her small body. She exhibited how a child can push aside despair and appreciate as many moments as possible, to believe in the power of resurrection, both the human spirit and in a Biblical sense. — Brent Green

I felt great empathy for my friend, as one form of cancer after another emerged to challenge him. I felt sympathy for his suffering that surely clawed at his daily routines, always active and busy, but he rarely verbalized complaints while courageously challenging his archenemy. He met pain and physical decline with 600-calorie workouts; he discarded anxieties somewhere along innumerable running trails; he faced death by running through life at full stride. — Brent Green

We talked, and I ate, and for the first time, Katy's death moved to the back of my consciousness, if only for a moment. This is bereavement: the slow, eventual reassertion of your own meaningless preoccupations. As — Drew Magary

Holding the knife with the blade against my palm, it became so clear how my life would only contain shadows now. Shadows of things gone; not just the people themselves but everything connected to them. Was this my future? Every moment, every tiny thing I saw and did and touched, weighted by loss. Every space in this house and
my town and the world in general, empty in a way that could never be filled. — Jennifer Castle

Love is love," I told her, as I tell all of my patients who are ashamed to find themselves shattered by the death of a dog. "Loss is loss. — Meg Donohue

When a friend of Abigail and John Adams was killed at Bunker Hill, Abigail's response was to write a letter to her husband and include these words, "My bursting heart must find vent at my pen. — David McCullough

It's time to accept that I am average, and to stop making this acceptance of my averageness into a bereavement. — Sara Baume

The griefs that have been hardest for me were the ones I didn't recognize as griefs, because they came in what were supposed to be the best times of my life. No one whispered in my ear that the best times, the ones that change our lives, are woven with the thread of loss. — Anna White

My feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping
but
I shall go on living. — Pablo Neruda

Unacquainted with grief, I knew not how to appraise my bereavement; I could not rightly estimate the strength of the stroke. — Ambrose Bierce

We communed together a moment, one with the other - I was deeply fascinated. At our first encounter I am sure I had a nebulous presentiment that I would one day go to it in spite of my hesitation, in spite of all the efforts put forth to hold me back, - and the emotion that overwhelmed me in the presence of the sea was not only one of fear, but I felt also an inexpressible sadness, and I seemed to feel the anguish of desolation, bereavement and exile. With downcast mien, and with hair blown about by the wind, I turned and ran home. I was in the extreme haste to be with my mother; I wished to embrace her and to cling close to her; I desired to be with her so that she might console me for the thousand indefinite, anticipated sorrows that surged through my heart at the sight of those green waters, so vast and so deep. — Pierre Loti

Perhaps ...
To R.A.L.
Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,
And I shall see that still the skies are blue,
And feel one more I do not live in vain,
Although bereft of you.
Perhaps the golden meadows at my feet,
Will make the sunny hours of spring seem gay,
And I shall find the white May-blossoms sweet,
Though You have passed away.
Perhaps the summer woods will shimmer bright,
And crimson roses once again be fair,
And autumn harvest fields a rich delight,
Although You are not there.
But though kind Time may many joys renew,
There is one greatest joy I shall not know
Again, because my heart for loss of You
Was broken, long ago. — Vera Brittain

When my late father died - now I'm in mourning for my late mother - that sense of grief and bereavement suddenly taught me that so many things that I thought were important, externals, etc., all of that is irrelevant. You lose a parent, you suddenly realize what a slender thing life is, how easily you can lose those you love. Then out of that comes a new simplicity and that is why sometimes all the pain and the tears lift you to a much higher and deeper joy when you say to the bad times, I will not let you go until you bless me. — Jonathan Sacks

And if Francoise then, inspired like a poet with a flood of confused reflections upon bereavement, grief, and family memories, were to plead her inability to rebut my theories, saying: "I don't know how to espress (sic) myself" - I would triumph over her with an ironical and brutal common sense worthy of Dr. Percepied; and if she went on: "All the same she was a geological (sic) relation; there is always the respect due to your geology (sic)," I would shrug my shoulders and say: "It is really very good of me to discuss the matter with an illiterate old woman who cannot speak her own language," adopting, to deliver judgment on Francoise, the mean and narrow outlook of the pedant, whom those who are most contemptuous of him in the impartiality of their own minds are only too prone to copy when they are obliged to play a part upon the vulgar stage of life. — Marcel Proust

Crime is interesting. It's huge and fascinating, and it's what my business, TV and film, is largely based on. But the realities are tragic, and in crime drama you rarely see the pain of bereavement or any consequences. It's reduced to a chess game. — Peter Capaldi

For as long as the world spins and the earth is green with new wood, she will lie in this box and not in my arms. — Lurlene McDaniel

It seems to me that I grew younger daily with each adult habit that I acquired. I had lived a lonely childhood and a boyhood straitened by war and overshadowed by bereavement; to the hard bachelordom of English adolescence, the premature dignity and authority of the school system, I had added a sad and grim strain of my own. Now, that summer term with Sebastian, it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known, a happy childhood, and though its toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and its naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins, there was something of nursery freshness about us that fell little short of the joy of innocence. — Evelyn Waugh

She's not here," I tell him. Buttercup hisses again. "She's not here. You can hiss all you like. You won't find Prim." At her name, he perks up. Raises his flattened ears. Begins to meow hopefully. "Get out!" He dodges the pillow I throw at him. "Go away! There's nothing left for you here!" I start to shake, furious with him. "She's not coming back! She's never ever coming back here again!" I grab another pillow and get to my feet to improve my aim. Out of nowhere, the tears begin to pour down my cheeks. "She's dead, you stupid cat. She's dead. — Suzanne Collins

There is nothing like feeling truly "awake" and aware of my life and what it means to me. So I look ahead and think, "There is still so much to be done, and I will continue to make the most of it. — Elizabeth Berrien

Let's be honest, the world's always been a scary place with very little charm. I try to brush it off as I've brushed off the flu, as I brushed off the death of my father when I was young, as I've brushed off so much since Benton has known me. — Patricia Cornwell

Recreating the experience of, say, bereavement in my own head is pretty rough. I was used to switching off from emotions every day of my working life as a journalist, but in fiction, you have to feel it 100%, or else it's a flat experience for the reader. — Karen Traviss

But that was before I saw her coming down those stairs reincarnated as a goddess. A goddess in mourning. Those emblems of bereavement kept alive the pity, the religious adoration, the sense that my beloved was a spirit who must be worshiped in spirit. But out of the black bodice rose the luminous column of the neck; between the coils of honey-colored hair the face was transfigured by a kind of unearthly radiance. — Aldous Huxley

I stare at the pile of discarded remnants and think of my mother. Did she touch that pillar there? Does her scent still linger in a fragment of glass or a splinter of wood? A terrible emptiness settles into my chest. No matter how much I go about living, there are always small reminders that make the loss fresh again. — Libba Bray

It happened in New York, April 10th, nineteen years ago. Even my hand balks at the date. I had to push to write it down, just to keep the pen moving on the paper. It used to be a perfectly ordinary day, but now it sticks up on the calendar like a rusty nail. — Donna Tartt

When along the pavement,
Palpitating flames of life,
People flicker around me,
I forget my bereavement,
The gap in the great constellation,
The place where a star used to be — D.H. Lawrence

I look. There it is. I feel it. The insistent pull to the heart that the hawk brings, that very old longing of mine to possess the hawk's eye. To live the safe and solitary life; to look down on the world from a height and keep it there. To be the watcher; invulnerable, detached, complete. My eyes fill with water. Here I am, I think. And I do not think I am safe. — Helen Macdonald

Deep in earth my love is lying
And I must weep alone. — Edgar Allan Poe