loss

Death is only final when you know you're not going to see them again!

Never dreaming, was I, poor Jack Duluoz, that the soul is dead. That from Heaven grace descends . . . No Doctor Pisspot Poorpail to tell me; no example inside my first and only skin. That love is the heritage, and cousin to death. That the only love can only be the first love, the only death the last, the only life within, and the only word . . . choked forever.

The accounts of rape, wife beating, forced childbearing, medical butchering, sex-motivated murder, forced prostitution, physical mutilation, sadistic psychological abuse, and other commonplaces of female experience that are excavated from the past or given by contemporary survivors should leave the heart seared, the mind in anguish, the conscience in upheaval. But they do not. No matter how often these stories are told, with whatever clarity or eloquence, bitterness or sorrow, they might as well have been whispered in wind or written in sand: they disappear, as if they were nothing. The tellers and the stories are ignored or ridiculed, threatened back into silence or destroyed, and the experience of female suffering is buried in cultural invisibility and contempt_ the very reality of abuse sustained by women, despite its overwhelming pervasiveness and constancy, is negated. It is negated in the transactions of everyday life, and it is negated in the history books, left out, and it is negated by those who claim to care about suffering but are blind to this suffering.The problem, simply stated, is that one must believe in the existence of the person in order to recognize the authenticity of her suffering. Neither men nor women believe in the existence of women as significant beings. It is impossible to remember as real the suffering of someone who by definition has no legitimate claim to dignity or freedom, someone who is in fact viewed as some thing, an object or an absence. And if a woman, an individual woman multiplied by billions, does not believe in her own discrete existence and therefore cannot credit the authenticity of her own suffering, she is erased, canceled out, and the meaning of her life, whatever it is, whatever it might have been, is lost. This loss cannot be calculated or comprehended. It is vast and awful, and nothing will ever make up for it.

I always wondered what it must be like to lose a twin__f somehow Mary felt it like it was happening to her. If she felt physical pain.

The moonlight rained down on the beach as if to shine a spotlight on my solitude, and I wanted to cry out at it, __hy did you take her? You, surrounded by all of your twinkling stars and infinite wonders and darkness. There__ already enough beauty where you are.

Heart, we will forget him!You and I, to-night!You may forget the warmth he gave,I will forget the light.When you have done, pray tell me,That I my thoughts may dim;Haste! lest while you__e lagging,I may remember him!

Bitter, bitter, this desolation of angels.

I still want to feel you against me._ Her gaze dropped to his hands. __ want you to stay with me. Hold me. Just tonight. If I lose you again tomorrow then it will still be worth it. I will lose you a hundred times, if you would but hold me in your arms each time before my loss._ She saw his eyes water, but no tears emerged...

In other words, I was a moderately happy penguin who was occasionally attacked by sadness.

Yes, it's worth it. The pain of sorrow is terrible and hard to bear, but the joy of love makes it worthwhile. p123

This wasn't the first time that I'd come close to death, but it was the first time I'd been involved in this part of it, this strange, terrible saying goodbye to someone you've loved.

If those we love visit us when we dream, those who torment us almost always visit us when we're still awake.

He sank to his knees, absolutely full of despair and sadness. For a long time, droplets of blood continued to fall into his lap.

The guy who broke up with me... he was exactly like you, in the beginning. Charming, and nice. They're all like you in the beginning. But I always end up like this. And I can't do it anymore.

And it did me no good to recall particular conversations (if indeed these were particular conversations I was remembering so vividly, rather than inventions of my uneasy brain). Remembering clarified nothing.

I realized, it is not the time that heals, but what we do within that time that creates positive change.

It makes the other one more precious and also not enough. We have to try to fill not only our own boots but other people's too - yours, Leo's, Dad's. We have to expand at the moment we feel the most shrunk.

For certain, neither of them sees a happy Present, as the gate opens and closes, and one goes in, and the other goes away.