grief

The abundance of small things, it'll bury you.

I hoped that grief was similar to the other emotions. That it would end, the way happiness did. Or laughter.

When other people are grieving, the newspaperman turns efficient.

You can't beat yourself up anymore,' he says. 'And you can't compare your thing to my thing or to anyone else's thing on the how-bad-should-I-feel? scale.

I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to my grief. It felt better, somehow, to be helpless. I didn't feel ashamed.

As I walk through the redwood trees, my sneakers sopping up days of rain, I wonder why bereaved people even bother with mourning clothes, when grief itself provides such an unmistakable wardrobe.

blue-gold sky, fresh cloud, emerald-black mountain, trees on rocky ledges, on the summit, the tiny pin of a telephone tower-all brilliantly clear, in shadow and out. and on and through everything everywhere the sun shines without reservation (p. 97)

Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved

You don't even realize you're living in a before until you wake up one day and find yourself in an after.

It is the blessing of dumb work done close to the earth-one gritty minute at a time, we move forward.

It was like someone had died- like I had died. Because it had been more than just losing the truest of true loves, as if that were not enough to kill anyone. It was also losing a whole future, a whole family- the whole life that I'd chosen..._

Man is more himself, more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing and grief superficial.

It is the heart that has been pierced that feels the most.

If suddenly you do not exist,if suddenly you no longer live,I shall live on.I do not dare,I do not dare to write it,if you die.I shall live on.For where a man has no voice,there, my voice.Where blacks are beaten,I cannot be dead.When my brothers go to prisonI shall go with them.When victory,not my victory,but the great victory comes,even though I am mute I must speak;I shall see it come even though I am blind.No, forgive me.If you no longer live,if you, beloved, my love,if you have died,all the leaves will fall in my breast,it will rain on my soul night and day,the snow will burn my heart,I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping, butI shall stay alive,because above all things you wanted me indomitable,and, my love, because you know that I am not only a manbut all mankind.

When I was young I wanted so much to be like her. What a blessing are those moments when there is nothing to worry about, no thought of trouble or grief in the world.

My heart was broken so badly last time that it still hurts. Isn't that crazy? To still have a broken heart almost two years after a love story ends?_

It is through the tender austerity of our troubles that the Son of Man comes knocking. In every event He seeks an entrance to my heart, yes, even in my most helpless, futile, fruitless moments. The very cracks and empty crannies of my life, my perplexities and hurts and botched-up jobs, He wants to fill with Himself, His joy, His life...He urges me to learn of Him: 'I am gentle and humble in heart.

...nor can we know ahead of the fact the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaningless itself.