Bereavement Quotes

My mom’s smile is genuine,A lilac beamingIn the presence of her Sun.Indentions in the sand proveTime’s linear progression,Her hair yet unblighted,Carrying midnight’s consistency.Clear tracks fading as theMovement slips furtherIn the past.CheekbonesHigh, soft,In summer’s hue,Hopeful.Each step’s unknown impact,A future looking back.My father’s strength:One whoseLife is in his arms.Squinting past the camera,He rests upon a rockLike caramel corn half eaten,Just to the leftOf man-made concrete conventionDaylight’s eraserRemoving color to his right.Dustin sitsIn my father’s lap,Open mouth of a droolingBig mouth bass;Muscle toneOf a well exercisedJelly fish,He looks at meHalf aware;His wheelchairPerched at the edgeOf parking lot gravel graftedLike a scar on nature’s beach,Opening to the ironic splendorOf a bitter tasting lake.I took the picture.Age 11.Capturing the pinnacle arcOf a sonTo my lilacWhoOutlived him and weeps,Still.Their sky has staple holes –Maybe that’s how theLightLeaked out.

The truth of it was he didn't want her. He wanted Mary Kate with every cell of his body. He missed everything about her. The feel of her sleeping at his side. Her gentle snores. Her soft brown curls tickling his nose enough to wake him from a sound sleep even on nights when he needed it most. Her smile. The smell of her. At odd moments he thought he had heard her laughter, or he'd catch a glimpse of her in the corner of an eye, but all of it was a lie, and every time it happened it was as if someone had ripped a deep wound in his chest. The pain was raw enough to make him want to take a razor to his wrist, but each time he considered acting upon the idea something stopped him, and so, he stumbled on barely alive and wishing for an end. At times he couldn't breathe, couldn't move without wanting to scream.

When we learn to attribute meaning to the events in our lives, we connect with our Higher Purpose, Higher Wisdom, or Source; we become Master of the Self. A gradual process, this is often tied to loss and to love.

Mourning is never really complete. The mappings of the old play remain in the cortex, like those mappings of the phantom limb.

I see we have a problem.’ Lucas gripped her other arm and gave her a non-too-gentle shake. ‘Are you in a relationship? or...’ Those dark eyes searching hers narrowed into slits. ‘Are you married?

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.

Do not go to my grave. Mary knows, I am not there. Look for me in between pages and on people’s lips.Do not go to my old school. Do not go to my old house —I am not in any of those places. Look for me in your hearts and greet me there.

...this is what death does to you, it takes and takes, so that all that is left of your memories is a faint tracing of spilled ash.

You never know what you have till you've lost it.

Father, be near as we are surrounded by this cloud of deep suffering. Open our eyes to see that you are all things, the light and the darkness, not only those things that seem good in our eyes, but the horrifying unexplainable. Wrap us up inside of the cloud and reveal the mysteries that can only be learned in places of sorrow, that when we walk out we will be as Moses, transformed by the shadow and beaming with the radiant light of your glory. Give us the strength to love on, though our hearts are broken.

Hope comes in the form of synchronicities. When one even occurs and is followed by another, which is in complete alignment with the first, we sense we are not alone. We know, intuitively throughout our beings, that what we are experiencing is the universe lovingly embracing us.

Loss pushes us to difficult places where we have not been before. We often question whether or not we have the courage and stamina to survive the pain. However, we often are given gifts that tell us that we are not alone and that we can withstand the journey.

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.

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.

The truth is, we never know what life will bring us and we don't have as much control as we might think we have. But we CAN choose how we walk through life and how we spend our time.

Time possesses emotional potency. For persons whom suffer from of bereavement, time possesses a healing capacity. Passage of time cures heartache by dimming the mind’s attunement to painful occurrences. For some people, the passage of time is akin to placing a welcomed physical boundary between themselves and past horrors. Passage of time allows us to forget and the ability to forget is medicinal. Time acts as a mental barrier between our present mental state and the pain that we once felt.

I realized that it was not that I didn’t want to go on without him. I did. It was just that I didn’t know why I wanted to go on

You attend the funeral, you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. She is dead. You are alive. So live.

Love is a powerful force. There is nothing in this world, no other energy, as powerful as the force of genuine, unconditional love.

Deep in earth my love is lyingAnd I must weep alone.

Forgiveness is a conscious choice to become more liberated and less constrained by the past. This simple act of changing one’s mindset can be the wellspring of tolerance, mercy, and compassion.

Cordelia! stay a little. Ha! What is't thou say'st? Her voice was ever soft.

Give yourself permission to see and feel the extraordinary events in your own life. In internalizing them, you also will find your perspective about life and its meaning will change, resulting in growth and expansion of your soul.

What is so sweet as to awake from a troubled dream and behold a beloved face smiling upon you? I love to believe that such shall be our awakening from earth to heaven. My faith never wavers that each dear friend I have “lost” is a new link between this world and the happier land beyond the morn. My soul is for the moment bowed down with grief when I cease to feel the touch of their hands or hear a tender word from them; but the light of faith never fades from the sky, and I take heart again, glad they are free. I cannot understand why anyone should fear death…Suppose there are a million chances against that one that my loved ones who have gone on are alive. What of it? I will take that one chance and risk mistake, rather than let any doubts sadden their souls, and find out afterward. Since there is that one chance of immortality, I will endeavor not to cast a shadow on the joy of the departed…Certainly it is one of our sweetest experiences that when we are touched by some noble affection or pure joy, we remember the dead most tenderly, and feel more powerfully drawn to them.

There is an hour, a minute - you will remember it forever - when you know instinctively on the basis of the most inconsequential evidence, that something is wrong. You don't know - can't know - that it is the first of a series of "wrongful" events that will culminate in the utter devastation of your life as you have known it.

Though he plunged into work as another man might have plunged into dissipation, to drown the thought of her, you could see that he had no longer any interest in it; he no longer loved it. He attacked it with a fury that had more hate in it than love.

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.