Always

“It seems to us, who have ‘survived,’ that some part of us has died with those we’d loved, and is interred with them, or burnt to ash.” –Joyce Carol Oates

A Son’s Goodbye

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‎”When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

“Thanks for enduring hardships with joy, and for facing death with hope. Now you are free…” –Jordan Jonas

William Paul Jonas

November 2, 1948–February 22, 2011

“Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” –Matthew 13:43

2000th Post: Dedicated to My Dad

“She remembered him smiling, and realized that time, that great old healer, had finally accomplished its work, and now, across the years, the face of love no longer stirred up agonies of grief and bitterness. Rather, one was left feeling simply grateful. For how unimaginably empty the past would be without him to remember.”
— Rosamunde Pilcher

Dad and His Family

“After a while, though the grief did not go away from us, it grew quiet. What had seemed a storm wailing through the entire darkness seemed to come in at last and lie down.”
— Wendell Berry

A Brother’s Love

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
— Cormac McCarthy

Tuna Cream

“You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”
— Anne Lamott

Hearts

“(on grief) And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.”
— Julian Barnes (Flaubert’s Parrot)

Please

“But please, please – won’t you – can’t you give me something that will cure Mother?’

Up till then he had been looking at the Lion’s great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.

My son, my son,’ said Aslan. ‘I know. Grief is great.”
— C.S. Lewis (The Magician’s Nephew)

Unspeakable Love

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief…and unspeakable love.”
–Washington Irving