#Grief

"... [They] took it upon themselves to start the laborious process of cranking up life again, after death has stopped us all in its tracks."

"It is grief that develops the powers of the mind."

"There are no coincidences in life. What person that wandered in and out of your life was there for some purpose, even if they caused you harm. Sometimes, it doesn’t make sense the short periods of time we get with people, or the outcomes from their choices. However, if you turn it over to God he promises that you will see the big picture in the hereafter. Nothing is too small to be a mistake."

"Not only had my brother disappeared, but--and bear with me here--a part of my very being had gone with him. Stories about us could, from them on, be told from only one perspective. Memories could be told but not shared."

"But it was not the room’s disorder which was frightening; it was the fact that when one began searching for the key to this disorder, one realized that it was not to be found in any of the usual places. For this was not a matter of habit or circumstance or temperament; it was a matter of punishment and grief."

"Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable haemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed. Like Schrödinger’s cat inside a box you can never ever open."

"He wipes tears off my face and then snot. He uses his hands. He loves me that much."

"Wait.” Stefan’s voice was hard suddenly. Bonnie and Elena turned back and froze, embracing each other, trembling. “What is your—your father—going to do to you when he finds out that you allowed this?”"He will not kill me,” Sage said brusquely, the wild tone back in his voice. “He may even find it as amusant as I do, and we will be sharing a belly laugh tomorrow."

"Youth offers the promise of happiness, but life offers the realities of grief."

"The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares."

"Ten years, she's dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more be gone than gravity or the moon."

"When love dies, the heart's ashes do not leave on the wind—they rest on the mantelpiece of the soul, darkening the sunrise we once saw to be beautiful."

"Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time. It's like an amputation, I feel a limb is being torn off, without which I shall be unable to function. And yet, once it is done... life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid and fuller than before."

"But grief makes a monster out of us sometimes . . . and sometimes you say and do things to the people you love that you can't forgive yourself for."

"Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope"

"You said move on, where do I go?"

"Set your compass to beauty, humor, and grief; stay the course no matter what, and I'll support you with everything I've got."

"The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before."

"Healing Follows Forgiveness"

"I will not say, do not weep, for not all tears are an evil."