WHAT LOSS DOES

'Catastrophic loss by definition precludes recovery. It will transform us or destroy us, but it will never leave us the same.'

Jerry Sitser, A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss, p.62.

GRIEF IS METABOLIC

'As the days went by, I realized that grief is metabolic it crawls through you like disease and takes your energy away. Then it gathers and hits like [a] sudden migraine, like being hit by a car, like having a large, flat rock hurled at your chest.'

Laurie Colwin, Shine on, Bright and Dangerous Object, p.27.

THE LENGTH OF SORROW

'Sorrow is the longest thing in life...'
Niall Williams, Time of the Child, p.238.

GRIEF

'...grief, as I said, is a state as well as a process. And as with love, time simultaneously both stops and moves. You want it to stop - to be a state, so that you can hold on as much as possible to the image and memory of the lost loved one; but you also want it to be a process, one which will convey you out of this strange new land of pain before your spirit breaks.'

Julian Barnes, Changing My Mind, p.56.

HOW ART HELPS

'Art is the poem that finds the words when all other words fail. Art is the painting that knows the colour of our grief. Art is the actor identifies with us and says, "Yes - this is happening and it might not be OK.'"

Alastair Gordon, Why Art Matters, p.92.

PASTORAL SILENCE

'There are moments when one must not attempt to console, when the word must not be uttered to parents of murdered children. When one should keep one's mouth shut. "In Rama there was a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning., Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not."'

Ronald Blythe, Next to Nature, p.440.

FEELING OTHERS' GRIEF

'One feels another's grief most where it touches one's own.'
Mary Renault, The King Must Die, p.242.

FAILING TO PREPARE FOR THE EXPECTED

'There is only one kind of shock worse than the totally unexpected: the expected for which one has refused to prepare.'

Mary Renault, The Charioteer, p.84.

THE LONELINESS OF GRIEF

'Grief is such a - oh, it is such a solitary thing; this is the terror of it, I think. It is like sliding down the outside of a really long glass building while nobody sees you.'

Elizabeth Strout, Oh William! p.3.

DEATH IS NOT LOSS WITH JESUS

'When a saint dies he has no cause at all to grieve because he leaves his friends and relations that he dearly loves, for he doth not properly leave them. For enjoys them still in Christ; because everything that he loves in them and loves them for, is in Christ in an infinite degree; whether it be nearness of relation or any perfection and good received, or love to us, or a likeness in dispositions, or whatever is a rational ground of love.' 

Jonathan Edwards in Dane C Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life, p.173.

THE GRIEF OF OLD AGE

'...an old person's sorrow, which so often lies in seeing the failure of those whom we love, rather than in our own personal grief.' 

Martin Boyd, The Cardboard Crown, p.196. 

TIME HEALS?

'...time heals all wounds or at least dresses them, makes them endurable.'

Frederick Buechner, A Sacred Journey, p.55. 

GRIEVING A HUSBAND

'Oh, she thought, oh, this is how it is, it is the small things; a bonfire in the evening; this is what makes it so hard to bear. For what she missed now was not passion or important deeds, significant words, but the routine of everyday life, eating and work and sleep and talk of this and that, and the sound of footsteps about the house, the smell of wet boots on the step. Nothing could replace all of this, nothing, though she might live forever. It was not vows and fleshly love and the bearing of children she wanted, it was much less, and so much more.' 

Susan Hill, In the Springtime of the Year, p.125. 

GRIEF

'It hurts just as much as it is worth'
Julian Barnes in Zadie Smith. 'Joy' in Feeling Free, p.435. 

THE SORROW OF NOT YET SEEING JESUS

'"Truly, truly, I say to you, ...you will be sorrowful," Jesus said. Well, ...we're sorrowful about lots of things, you and I, God knows. It goes with the territory, sorrow. We carry it about with us the way a snail carries it shell; it is one of the homes we live in - sorrow about our country and about our pillaged earth, sorrow that youth grows old and beauty fades. Sorrow about death - about all the undone things the dead leave behind them as we will leave undone things behind us too when our time comes, like a pair of old shoes broken in to to take us on some blessed journey we never got around to taking, maybe the most crucial journey of our lives. But as Christians we inherit this special refinement of sorrow that Jesus speaks of, this sorrow for connoisseurs - which is the sorrow of not seeing plainly the One we need most to see.' 

Frederick Buechner, 'A Little While' in A Room Called Remember, p.99. 

GRIEF CAN'T BE FIXED

'Our culture is imbued with the belief that we can fix just about anything and make it better; or, if we can't, that it's possible to trash what you have and start all over again. Grief is the antithesis of this belief: it requires endurance, and forces us to accept that there are some things in this world that simply cannot be fixed.' 

Julia Samuel in Robert McCrum, Every Third Thought, p.201. 

BREAKING BAD NEWS

'At fourteen, alongside my father, I'd had to help break the news to a close mate that his father had been killed. The feeling is hideous. It's like killing someone. They go down like a water buffalo by an axe, and some part of you believes it's your fault.' 

Tim Winton, The Boy Behind the Curtain, p.46. 

THE NEED TO TALK ABOUT DEATH

'The problem we often face is that we wait until somebody has died to talk about life after death. The one time in our lives when we simply cannot engage in any meaningful creative theological conversation is when we are in the grip of a raw and disorientating grief. Unless discussion about the fundamentals of what we believe happens after death becomes a common conversation among us, we will never be able to become a community that can talk meaningfully, confidently and compassionately about death, grief and loss.' 

Paula Gooder, Body, p.44. 

"MOVING ON"

'Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because

any sensible person knows grief is a long-term

project. I refuse to rush. The pain that is thrust upon

us let no man slow or speed or fix.' 

Max Porter, Grief is the Thing with Feathers, p.99. 

LOVING KINDNESS

'They offer me a space on the sofa next to them
and the pain of them being so naturally kind is like
appendicitis. I need to double over and hold myself
because they are so kind and keep regenerating and
recharging their kindness without any input from me.'
Max Porter, Grief is the Thing with Feathers, p.46.