loss

There is a deep sense in which we are all ghost towns. We are all haunted by the memory of those we love, those with whom we feel we have unfinished business. While they may no longer be with us, a faint aroma of their presence remains, a presence that haunts us until we make our peace with them and let them go. The problem, however, is that we tend to spend a great deal of energy in attempting to avoid the truth. We construct an image of ourselves that seeks to shield us from a confrontation with our ghosts. Hence we often encounter them only late at night, in the corridors of our dreams.

If you keep picking at that scab on your heart, it won't heal.

A feeling of pleasure or solace can be so hard to find when you are in the depths of your grief. Sometimes it's the little things that help get you through the day. You may think your comforts sound ridiculous to others, but there is nothing ridiculous about finding one little thing to help you feel good in the midst of pain and sorrow!

These stories, I realized, were lost. Nobody was going to know that part of the city but as a place where a bomb went off. The bomb was going to become the story of this city. That's how we lose the city - that's how our knowledge of what the world is is taken away from us - when what we know is blasted into rubble and what is created in its place bears no resemblance to what there was and we are left strangers in a place we knew, in a place we ought to have known.

I loved and lost and survived.

You lose a wallet or keys or something and you notice in a second, but your life can go missing and you don't even know it.

You have to do what feels right for you. Do not let anyone influence you otherwise. It is your mind, your heart, and your own internal wisdom that will lead you in the direction you need to go.

Compromise, communicate, and never go to bed angry - the three pieces of advice gifted and regifted to all newlyweds.

the heart aches through nights__he broken places of neglect

Shine in any season of your life!Head on with confidence in your life__ pilgrim!In deep faith, countless hope and unconditional love blessed by the Almighty.Newness of each rising day, bringing forth colourful sunsets.Enkindle your soul once more with courage, joy and love,flowing in a river of awakening & sharing:with a heart who once knew that hurt, pain, loss_means to SHINE!

Like Mom, Zoe thought__ike Mom used to. And that__ where they differed, for Zoe wrote quiet poetry suffused with twilight and questions. It__ not even good poetry, she thought. I don__ have talent, it__ her. I should be the one ill; she has so much to offer, so much life. __ou__e a dark one,_ her mother said sometimes with amused wonder. __ou__e a mystery.

Don't cry. She wouldn't like it. When I missed my father, I used to cry. Mama taught me when I cry, he is sad and will cry, too. I don't want my daddy sad. I'm sure you don't want your daughter sad, too.

LamentFor JAmong the small graves a soft shaft of sunlight gently rainsOn a memory; etches, as a glittering finger,Golden corn field hair, ignites eyes sweet as the seas blue plains,Traces lips pink as Marys carnation tears and lingersThen is gone. Oh ancient sun above how shall I tellOf the hearts deep yearnings that the years can never quell?

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it...We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be 'healing.' A Certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to 'get through it,' rise to the occasion, exhibit the 'strength' that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. 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 meaninglessness itself.

Listen to me: die after me, all right? I don't care what else you do, where you go, how you screw up your life, just... survive. Outlive me, please.

People and birds were alike. Things happened that hurt them or made their lives harder. All the time. But losing someone or something important didn't mean the end of everything. It meant you had to find a new way to do things.

When life hands you the unthinkable you must find new ways to see.

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.