Recently I stumbled upon some old journals written when travelling South America as a 23 year old. There, among the descriptions of my adventures, I was curious to find lots of quotes from books I must have been reading at the time - snippets that spoke to my soul. Apparently, I’ve always collected quotes...who knew?!
What I do know though, from conversations with clients and posts in our Coping With Loss community, is that I’m not alone in deriving comfort from grief quotes. Whether it’s quotes describing the pain of loss, inspirational quotes giving us hope that we can somehow survive, or snippets reflecting love and loss in other ways, it’s clear quotes about losing a loved one can help us process grief.
So, for this month’s blog, I thought I’d share some of the quotes that have helped me in my grief.
“There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater. But sometimes it doesn’t.
Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain and the work of every day, the slow walk towards a better life. That is the sort of bravery I must have now.”
This quote, from Veronica Roth’s teen fiction book, Allegiant, has always spoken to me deeply. When I’ve felt lost, scared, and doubtful over the years, I’ve turned to my own book, Resilient Grieving, where it appears in the front matter, and read it for strength, time and time again.
I love it for its message and it’s understanding that the slow walk towards better days ahead requires small acts of bravery as we keep plodding on, every day, putting one step after the other. I often think of bravery, with a lower case b, or courage with a lower case c: not large valiant acts of BRAVERY but small, every day acts of courage that we all need to navigate grief. Whether that’s sending a text when you’re feeling lonely, asking someone for a hug, showing up at the school gate, going for a first date, or entering their empty room. Day in day out, grieving requires so much bravery. [I also love it because it was highlighted by Abi in the book, one of the last she read before she died. Reading her highlighted passages gives me a tiny insight into the woman she wanted to become.]
I seem to have accumulated several grief quotes that help me understand how much death changes us. The first, came from one of the Gibb brothers (think the Bee Gees here!), whom I vaguely remember seeing on a TV interview talking about the impact of losing his brothers. I can’t remember which brother was speaking, but I’ll never forget what he said -
“There are two kinds of people in life, those who have already lost someone they dearly love, and those who are yet to do so”.
My mum had just died at the time, and his words have remained one of my favourite quotes about losing someone you love. Grief changes us profoundly, we are not the same people once death has come calling and cracked through the veneer of our every day existence. It wakes us up, it demands that we put ourselves and our lives under the microscope, that we re-evaluate and reconsider. Some of that, no doubt, is for the good. Not the deaths, but the process of re-evaluation we are forced to go through in the aftermath as we try to come to terms with what has happened, what can happen – some of that can be good.
Similarly, not so long ago, I found a scribbled note I’d written in the months after Abi died, at the back of one of my work diaries. I recognised them immediately as coming from an Iain Banks novel I’d read years ago, The Bridge. “You have left your marks on each other, you have helped to shape one another; you have each given the other an accent to their life which they will never quite lose; no matter.” I like the idea that we’ve left our marks on each other.
In the foreword of my book, professor Karen Reivich, my mentor from the University of Pennsylvania, writes words that have long inspired me.
“The bottom line is this: we cannot change the past. All we can do is show up for the present and work toward the future we want.”
In the years since Abi died, I’ve often combined these words with those of another academic professor whose work I greatly admire, Tom Attig, who has described grieving as a process of “re-learning to live in the world”. This phrase makes so much sense to me, speaking not only to the pain of loss but the enormous process we have to go through to rebuild our future lives. Inherent in those words is the reminder that processing enormous grief takes time, and impacts so many different aspects of our lives. It requires determination, and ultimately it’s down to us.
The last comes from a song by Zach Bryan. One I discovered only recently, while browsing Spotify on a lazy Sunday morning. It hit my mood perfectly, and I loved the melody immediately, but as it reached its crescendo,I knew this song – Burn, Burn, Burn - would become a grief song I’d hang on to.
“So let me go down the line, let me feel it all, joy, pain, and sky.
So let me go, down the line, we all burn, burn, burn, and die.
So let me go down the line, I wanna feel it all, joy, pain, and sky.”
When I see the words written out here on the page, they strike me as dark and stark, but when Zach and I belt them out together, they make the whole world make sense to me. All of the confusion, the pain, the anger, the sorrow, the massiveness, the emptiness, the joy, the awe, and the beauty all roll into one. I wanna feel it all...joy, pain and sky.
Of all of the quotes about losing a loved one, right now, this is what resonates best with me. Accepting that we’re all going to die and somehow getting comfortable with feeling all of life’s experiences while we’re living – joy, pain, and sky.
Yes, there have been times over the years when life has felt too much. I’ve cried in confusion and consternation – no doubt just like you. This is not what I signed up for, not what I expected and how can I go on when there’s just so much to tolerate? But I know the answer is to turn my face to the sun, breathe deep, and remind myself that this, in fact, is it. I signed up for life. And if death has taught me anything, it is to hang on to all of it. Be brave, love fiercely, and know that you’ve got it in you to somehow cope, come what may.
These are just some of my favourite grief quotes and writings that have helped me understand, process and tussle with my grief over the years.
What are your favourite quotes about losing a loved one?
We’d all love to hear what inspirational quotes have kept you going, helped make this whole bewildering process feel a little less scary, or given you comfort. Please email me your grief quotes.
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