On Grief
“Duende” and “saudade” are kin. Both insist that anguish and ecstasy are not opposites but accomplices, that beauty doesn’t arrive without a wound. Lorca knew it.
In Romanian there’s a word that sits in the same constellation: “dor”. It has no true translation, a combination of longing, love, grief, but mostly that unbearable sweetness of absence... See more
In Romanian there’s a word that sits in the same constellation: “dor”. It has no true translation, a combination of longing, love, grief, but mostly that unbearable sweetness of absence... See more
“Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life. Virtually everyone who has ever experienced grief mentions this phenomenon of “waves.”
“Information was control. Given that grief remained the most general of afflictions its
... See moreHere’s a word. Bereavement. Or, Bereaved. Bereft. It’s from the Old English bereafian, meaning ‘to deprive of, take away, seize, rob’. Robbed. Seized. It happens to everyone. But you feel it alone. Shocking loss isn’t to be shared, no matter how hard you try. ‘Imagine,’ I said, back then, to some friends, in an earnest attempt to explain, ‘imagine
... See moreHelen Macdonald • H Is for Hawk
My loss also includes a sense of bewilderment that I have never felt before after someone I love has died. It has been hard to understand how it is possible that my mother is nowhere. How can she be nowhere?
Siri Hustvedt • Mothers, Fathers, and Others: Essays
Grief is a weird thing. It can be a monster on your shoulder. It can be a friend sitting with you at the table. It can be a memory in a smell—the soft, delicate notes of floral perfume. Grief can find you in the middle of the night as you roll over to go back to sleep. It can even find you in your dreams.
Ashley Poston • The Seven Year Slip
. I wince now at the words I said in the past to grieving friends. "Find peace in your memories," I used to say. To have love snatched from you, especially unexpectedly, and then to be told to turn to memories. Rather than succor, my memories bring eloquent stabs of pain that say, "This is what you will never again have."
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie • Notes on Grief
Jean thought of grief like a pet almost. A couple of times a day you had to take it out for a walk and let your thoughts wander and see if anything happened. Or sit quietly in the kitchen with some food to nibble and think about the person. Hold them close to you in your mind. In your heart. Stroke their hair. Blow on their soup for them. It’s what
... See moreSusie Boyt • Loved and Missed
Yet the fundamental loss remains—it doesn’t just dissipate—and, in a strange way, I think it can become a magnet for other losses. We come to see we are all simply creatures carrying around our ever-deepening loss. Small griefs seem to collect around the bigger primary grief. I think this realization allows us to become a true human being.
Amanda Petrusich • Nick Cave on the Fragility of Life
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