grieving

Great pain is repetitive. Grief is repetitive.

. . . I understand that I was writing (recording) as well as seeking to right (to rectify) the wrong, and now, as I retell the tale, I realize that __ am still at the same subject_ still engaged in the same fearful and fierce activity__riting and seeking to right a mortal wrong. (86-87)

You learn not to mourn every little thing out here, or you__ never, ever stop grieving.

I miss her all the time. I know in my head that she has gone. The only difference is that I am getting used to the pain. It's like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, you forget it's there and keep falling in. After a while, it's still there, but you learn to walk round it.

Verily, a man should not cling to those who have passed, for he will likely neglect service to the living.

...she imagines her body curled in the narrow monk's bed, knees to chin, her own irrefutable geography, but she sees the blood of her futile heart seeping out over her chest and arms and legs, flooding across the rough wooden floor, down the narrow wooden stairs and out into the old soil of the garden. No roses, no, she does not even ask to make roses, just dissolution; most any night she asks just for that.

I wish I could take my brain and put it inside your head,_ Winslow said. __ust for a moment. Then you__ know what all I can__ find how to say.

Wandering is better than place sometimes, than home, than destination. Sometimes she can eke out the idea that wandering is possibility, chance, serendipity--he might be there, that place she didn't think to look, hadn't worked hard enough to find....

I miss your face. That big bright smile. You always had it, in any weather. It's hard for me to find one these days. These cold November days. Except when I think of you.

The pain of your loss will return. Less, but still considerable. I know you've worked hard to release it, but it can still take hold of you. I will help you sing away the fury, but I will not bear it for you.

Fear manifested itself as a physical presence that seemed to dominate the public sphere. Time almost stopped. Even without confirmation I could sense that something had gone terribly wrong.

Do you think that God would separate me from my husband if I killed myself? I feel as though I am going out of my mind at times. Wouldn__ God understand that I just want to be with him?

In twenty years you could say and do a lot you wish you hadn't. In twenty years you could store up a lot of regrets. And then, when it was too late, when there was no one left to say "I'm sorry" to, "I didn't mean it" to, you could stop sleeping for regret, stop eating, talking, working, for regret. You could stop wanting to live. You could want to die for regret.It was only remembering the good times that kept you from taking the knife from the kitchen drawer and, holding it so, tightly in your fist, on the bed, naked to no purpose except that that was how you came into the world and how your best moments in the world had been spent--holding it so, roll onto the blade, slowly so that it slid like love between your ribs and into that stupidly pumping muscle in your chest that kept you regretting.

Whatever might be taken from me need not leave me with a deficit in its wake.

... he wasn't crying for the woman who had died. He was crying for the woman she had been.

Imagine going a long time without seeing someone you love. Then after months or years getting the moment to see them and catch up. I think that's what death is like. Going a long time and missing them a lot, more and more each day. No matter how many years go by you miss them just as much as the first day they left. I miss my mom. Its been years. Its easier to manage but I miss her more and more. But I often think of the moment we will meet again and catch up again. In living life going a long time not seeing someone is tough then catching up right where you left off BUT imagine in death how powerful the feeling to see them again must be. Death is getting the chance to catch up and see them again. Experiencing the butterflies and that special high that is felt all over your body. Do not fear death. Embrace it as you do life. In life, love hard! Life moves fast. For when your time comes you have a chance to love hard again and catch up with those that left, those you've missed and those that missed you. Someone is there counting the days to seeing you again. Some you may not expect or some you've missed just as much. Don't fear what you think you're leaving behind. Don't fear at all. For what you leave is temporary, the living will too join you as you wait for them. And, that moment to catch up is worth the wait. You will pick up right where you left off as if time did not pass.

Grief came in waves, sometimes big, sometimes small, but even on the calmest days, the grief remained. The tide still came ashore.

Recovery unfolds in three stages. The central task of the first stage is the establishment of safety. The central task of the second stage is remembrance and mourning. The central focus of the third stage is reconnection with ordinary life.