“Contrary to many societal teachings, there is no conquering grief. It’s impossible to “win” at an emotional experience like loss, because grief is not that kind of game. The object of grief is not to make the grief go away, but to expand your heart to make room for it. When you live with an expanded heart, there is room for you and your grief to exist side by side.”
“The rain was that endless, gray, pounding kind of rain that makes your house feel cold and sad even if your mother s spirit isn t dying upstairs.”
“Of course that was just one of her many strange little habits and quirks: she put onion flakes on breakfast cereal and poured bearnaise sauce on popcorn, and if you yawned when she was next to you, she would lean forward and stick a finger in your mouth, just to see if she could pull it out again before you closed your mouth. Sometimes she put cornflakes in Jim s shoes, sometimes little bits of boiled egg and anchovies in Jack s pockets, and the looks on their face when they realized seemed to amuse her more and more each time she did it. That s the kind of thing you miss. That she used to do this, that she used to do that. She *was,* she *is.*”
“I miss him, and the pain of it is a yawning chasm, one into which I yearn to let myself fall.”
“We humans think we exist like this. Dadi gestured to the powders in their individual bowls. Apart. Single. Beautiful and vivid, but alone. … She upended the two bowls into the center of the larger container, and the powders came together. They were mixed somewhat, but still in their separate piles for the most part - Then Dadi continued, with each interaction with another soul, we begin to change. She put a finger into the pile of powders and began to stir gently. The powders mixed more the longer she stirred, red mingling with orange, losing its distinct form. We take pieces of them, and they take pieces of us. It s not bad. It s not good. It just is. By now the powders were completely mixed together, indistinguishable from each other. Our best friends, the ones we love the most, are the ones who can hurt us the most. Because look. She pointed down to the powders. We have had so many interactions, that we cannot separate their pieces from ours. And if we try, we would only be getting rid of some of the best parts of ourselves.”
“Every ray of sunshine, every drop of rain, every tear that falls, you are with me for I carry you in my heart forever.”
“No memories. No pain. I mean screw nostalgia. I don’t want it. Take it back!”
“Funny how losses were as much of a currency as happiness in life. Somehow, they were noticed more, though.”
“The language of loss and the language of hope may, at times, come into conflict as we face end-of-life issues.”
“Yet, there are those moments when what we stand to lose is greater than the pain that threatens to take it.”
“I awoke that cold winter morning knowing she was gone as a fact. Butt I had no pictures, no memory, of any goodbye, indeed no pictures of her at all. Instead I recalled my mother in the secondhand, so that I was sure that she had been taken, in the same way that I was sure that there were lions in Africa, though I had never seen one.”
“The sharp smell of her was still in our room, on our bed, and I tried to follow that scent down the alleys of my mind, but while all the twists and turns that marked my short life were clear before me, my mother appeared only as fog and smoke. I tried to recall her face, and when it did not come, I thought of her arms, her hands, but there was only smoke, and when I searched to remember her corrections, her affections, I found only smoke. She d gone from that warm, quilt of memory to the cold library of fact.”
“Often the only difference between victory and defeat; success and failure; or love and loss might be the diligence with which we pursue something.”
“The price of a war that usually never occurs to those desiring one is that while indeed both sides might win, there is every reason to believe the consequences of any ultimate victory requires masses of the innocent losing.”
“: And in that moment I possessed and lost the whole world and everything in it and was left with the feeling and the knowledge, which is love, that no matter how we give ourselves we always end up losing. That to love is to lose, the moment we agree to the bargain. And that, being human, we keep standing there wanting to lose more.”
“War All it left were your broken pieces Mood swings, and limbs in pins Like kings, You suffer from depression And there’s no question It has left you with all this aggression.”
“The morning starts innocently and the night becomes damned to men who believe wasted time is torture, as they spend a fine and precious day living in the past.”