loss

This skin cripples me. It always has. _ Kai Cheng Thom to -----, 2013 (age 22)

We can__ even remotely fathom that whatever is ending for us is always more than an ending.

You who have never __een there_ in the throes of grief, have no idea what is going on inside the head of the grieving spouse: the scatteredthoughts, the constant worry that we will forget something or someone in our fog-induced state, that strange feeling of not quite __eing all there_ when out in social situations, the pall that covers everything, like a cloak of sadness that never lifts.

I love hard and still haven__ a clue what it feels like_

The greatest loss is the loss of life.

I__ so sorry,_ he said, because after Pamela died, he promised himself that if anyone told him the smallest, saddest story, he would answer, I__ so sorry. Meaning, Yes, that happened. You couldn't believe the people who believed that not mentioning sadness was a kind of magic that could stave off the very sadness you didn't mention _ as though grief were the opposite of Rumpelstiltskin and materialized only at the sound of its own name.

Oh sweetheart, do you really think if youseal it up, that the pain's gonna go away?

I could only defend myself so much. It was my word against his. There was no evidence, nor was there any proof. My word meant very little.

There__ 6.5 billion people curled up like fists protesting death, but every breath we take has to be given back; a nine year old boy taught me that.

Since we all know for a fact that we're all going to die, why don't we all treat each other like we could lose each other at any minute?

I knew this for a fact. Little by little, the ache to see him, to hear him would disappear. Little by little I__ forget how his arms felt, how his fingers felt, how his lips felt..the sound of his voice, the intensity of his gaze, all of it. Trace by trace it would slip from my mind, recede into foggy memory. The painful haze that dulled my present would melt into the past. Maybe not all the way, maybe there would be a few scars. Maybe I'd be different, but I__ be me again. Little by little.

As the sky faded to night, her anger dissipated__ut not in a healing way, just dulled, like forged iron sizzling in a cold pail of water.

Loss taught me the priceless value of friends. I would have lost it but for my friends.

It__ important to have a buddy like that. Somebody who__l stop you from doing that really stupid thing you were gonna do just because you couldn__ think of anything better. -- unidentified soldier, eulogizing his dead buddy

I ached with loss that I__ never allowed myself to feel. As if I was leaving something important behind. And that something was me.

Time does have a way of softening most things. Anger, hate, and even loss are often diluted by the passage of time. And memories, well they become more precious as days go by . . . until one day the cup that seemed half-empty, incredibly, becomes half-full.

She remembers blood.A fine mist which goes deep into her lungs, over her skin and through the air. She remembers a desert at dusk. The sky indigo blue and the fire bright, so bright that she can see everything. Near the fire, in the night, all she knows is chaos wrapped in crimson. All is death and nightmare with a single solitary dancer who smiles cruelly as he moves. He is power and darkness. He is man and beast, silver coin eyes and that face, those claws and the agony of loss. Time stretches wide; seconds like vast eons swallow up her world. Vince is dead, his mother, his brother and her small son ripped apart and gushing as he/it moves. She is screaming, a howl of agony beyond words, primal and wordless. Still he moves, faster than air, faster than she could ever be. Blood drips from her face as she grunts, running with her lungs on fire and her last remaining hope wrapped in her arms.

And there was time enough--or so it seemed--for all the cherries atop all the ice-cream sundaes in all the world to fall from their frozen perches, as the heat of a treasure chest summer melted them away. Down and down into the cups of what it would all become, trusting on the ingredients, and how much love had been used to unite them.