loss

You have no idea how well you are doing,_ John complimented mejust a few minutes after he mentioned the Christmas card. What did that mean: That I was doing well? That I__ come to a family gathering? That I__ remembered to bring food? That I was dressed, and my hair combed? That I was wearing shoes? I wasn__ sure, but maybe just making an appearance at a family event meant I was handling things well.

Sometimes falling apart is the bravest act of all

You get all these friends when just when you don't need friends anymore.

Loss taught me the strength of faith. Faith in a God who understands. Faith in a Saviour who gave His all. Faith in a Comforter who walked by my side.

I often wondered after David__ death: Had they known something then? Did their very souls recognize each other? Did Jacob, closer to God than anyone else I knew, somehow sense this was the last time he would see his grandpa? Hadthere been a message to the little boy in David__ long-held gaze? Did these two people__he six-year-old boy and the sixty-year-old man_ realize something the rest of us didn__?

There are all sorts of losses people suffer- from the small to the large. You can lose your car keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.

Sound an alarm! Advertising, not deals, builds brands.

Again he thought of his own losses, and he wondered why it was that the things a person had lost_ or might lose_ defined him more than the things he yet possessed.

People are going to say a lot of things. And some of it will be helpful, and some of it will be annoying, and lots of it will get on your nerves. But they're saying it because they found it helpful when they lost someone. They mean well.

I think the purest of souls, those with the most fragile of hearts, must be meant for a short life. They can't be tethered or held in your palm.Just like a sparrow, they light on your porch. Their song might be brief, but how greedy would we be to ask for more? No, you cannot keep a sparrow. You can only hope that as they fly away, they take a little bit of you with them.

Everything that falls upon the eye is an apparition, a sheet dropped over the world's true workings. The nerves & brain are tricked, and one is left with dreams that these specters loose their hands from ours and walk away...so familiar as to imply that they should be permanent fixtures of the world, when in fact nothing is more perishable...Why must we be left, the survivors picking among flotsam, among the small, unnoticed, unvalued clutter that remained when they vanished, that only catastrophe had made notable?...It seemed to me that what perished need not also be lost.

No, I am not all right, I want to say. Have you been to my house? Have you seen how empty it is?

That evening I sat across from Jeremy Bulloch and Jacob at the dinner table. I watched as Jeremy, who seemed to speak Jacob__ silent language fluently, drummed his fingers up and down on the edge of the table, as if playing a piano. A delighted Jacob mimicked the actor__ actions. My throat filled with tears. I met Ben__ eyes across the table, where he sat straight with pride next to his son. He was enjoying the show just as much as I was. Jacob was in his element, interacting with an actor from his favorite movie. The other men at the table were part of the set: Mike, the owner of the comic book store, who had made the entire thing possible, and the Mandalorin Mercs, new friends of the little boy who hadbecome one of their own, a comrade in distress.

You can't undo loss. You can't unmake a mistake. (What The Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth?)

Missing Alina was worse than a terminal illness. At least when you were terminal you knew the pain was going to end eventually. But there was no light at the end of my tunnel. Grief was going to devour me, day into night, night into day, and although I might feel like I was dying from it, might even wish I was, I never would. I was going to have to walk around with a hole in my heart forever. I was going to hurt for my sister until the day I died. If you don't know what I mean or you think I'm being melodramatic, then you've never really loved anyone.

I am very familiar with the sound of loss.

I had just turned thirty. That was enough in itself to be depressed about. I never thought I would be this age and feel this worthless. I was supposed to be __omebody._ I guess you could say I was slightly disappointed at the outcome.

Leaving yourself behind is the worst loss a person can know.