Cheryl Hines Quotes

Grief is not just a series of events, stages, or timelines. Our society places enormous pressure on us to get over loss, to get through grief. But how long do you grieve for a husband of fifty years, a teenager killed in a car accident, a four-year-old child: a year? Five years? Forever? The loss happens in time, in fact in a moment, but its aftermath lasts a lifetime.

My beautiful wife is dead. She meant everything to me. Her laughter, her tears and her joy will remain with me the rest of my life.

As someone who has lived the nightmare of losing a child, I know that the enormous hole left behind remains forever.

You can't tell a 6-year-old your sister is going to die.

I just can't think how I would go on without children having lost Edith already... It's too upsetting for me to write about them. Naturally, I still hope, and wait, wait, wait.

Too many people I've loved dearly have left this earth. And some I've lost are still here breathing the same air. That grief can be comparable if not worse in its consumption.

Grief, when it comes, is nothing like we expect it to be.

The death of a child occasions a passion of grief and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will never inspire.

I was ravenous for my child and took to gorging myself in the boneyard, hoping that she might possibly meet me halfway, or just beyond, one night, if only for an instant—step back into her own bare feet, onto the wet grass or fallen leaves or snowy ground of the living Enon, so that we could share just one last human word.

Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement.

But she wasn’t around, and that’s the thing when your parents die, you feel like instead of going in to every fight with backup, you are going into every fight alone.

I have to say that since my mother died, I am not the same person anymore. My life has changed a great deal because it's really unbearable to think you can't see her anymore or talk to her anymore.

the death of any loved parent is an incalculable lasting blow. Because no one ever loves you again like that.

Parents should never have to bury their own children.

I tried to take solace in Holiday, our dog. I missed him in a way I hadn't yet let myself miss my mother and father, my sister and brother. That way of missing would mean that I had accepted that I would never be with them again; it might sound silly but I didn't believe it, would not believe it.

I don't know what it is about death that makes it so hard. I suppose it's the one-sided communication; the fact that we never get to ask our loved one if she suffered, if she is happy wherever she is now...if she is somewhere. It's the question mark that comes with death that we can't face, not the period.

I can't imagine a pain more all-encompassing than losing a child.

If your child dies, or you witness a terrible natural disaster, yes, you certainly want a scientific explanation as to what's happened. But science can't help you to find meaning, help you deal with that turbulence of your grief, rage, and dismay.

That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted them to say.

My son, a perfect little boy of five years and three months, had ended his earthly life. You can never sympathize with me; you can never know how much of me such a young child can take away. A few weeks ago I accounted myself a very rich man, and now the poorest of all.

We don't know the end from the beginning the way that God does. So when a child dies, sure that is incredibly difficult, and when you are the parent, there is almost nothing anybody can say to you that makes any sense.

Many grievers experience intense yearning or longing after a death - more than they experience, say, denial.

[after the death of a loved one] It is when there is nothing more to be done that the reality of the loss often hits with full force.

The tragedy of loss is not that we grieve, but that we cease to grieve, and then perhaps the dead are dead at last.

I might be better able to help parents of dying children, but for quite a while I felt less able, too emotionally involved. And from that time on, I could rarely discuss the death of a child without tears welling up into my eyes.