“Do not worry about your loss. Dream a new dream.”
“Watcha gonna do when I m gone, Maggie? you kept asking over and over, the other time, when you were going to London. I ll do macrame, punk. Whatcha gonna do when I m gone, Maggie? You really think I need you that bad? Yes, you said. A simple Nebraska statement.”
“[L]oss is the necessary source of a new manifestation. Some night I might see my emerald ring appear as a green star somewhere in the sky.”
“A loss means something was separated from you.”
“Loss means separateness.”
“This is what I ve found about life, as I ve gotten older: you start to lose people, Angela. It s not that there is ever a shortage of people - oh, heavens no. It is merely that - as the years pass - there comes to be a shortage of your people. The ones you loved. The ones who knew the people that you both loved. The ones who know your whole history. Those people start to be plucked away by death, and they are awfully hard to replace after they go.”
“If I am to become naught but ruin, may it be so that you can build anew upon the ashes.”
“Can you miss something before it s gone? … I think so. The anticipation of the loss hurts nearly as much as the loss itself. You find yourself trying to hold onto every detail, because you ll never have them again.”
“Sometimes you just meet the right person at the wrong time, I say softly. Yeah, he says. And then you spend every day afterward wishing that time could be rearranged.”
“Die now! For you can never be as happy as you are at this moment and it would be better to die with this feeling in your heart than know the bitterness of its loss.”
“Grief ripples out and sends powerful tremors through our foundation, through our hobbies, through our loved ones, and through our minds. For the first time in our lives, we can- not compartmentalize the hard, the bad, or the sad. There’s nowhere to tuck it away because every single aspect of our lives is infected with and tainted by grief.”
“May you be blessed so you can be a blessing to those who cross your path today. May you be loved so you can be love to those in need of you today. May you sing joy so you can be a song to those dying in grief today.”
“You love at least one thing more than you love any person and that thing is always worth living for.”
“Lost money is not lost beyond recall, But loss of time brings on the loss of all.”
“The magic of someone new never lasts long enough. We only want those we can t have. It s those we lost or who never knew we existed who leave their mark. The others barely echo.”
“The supple water is forever changing. It s almost like it never happened, which gives me hope that one day it will be like it never happened.”
“The passion and pathos of living with your beloved are therefore incompatible with the security of an eternal life. The sense of something being unique and irreplaceable is inseparable from the sense that it can be lost. This relation to loss is inscribed in the very form of living on. To live on is never to repose in a timeless or endless presence. Rather, to live on is to remain after a past that has ceased to be and before an unpredictable future that may not come to be. (44)”