Chris Cleave Quotes

We live in grief for having left the womb, for having left the teat, then school, then home. In my case, it was leaving marriages, and the death of my wife.

There was a lot they didn’t tell you about death, she had discovered, and one of the biggies was how long it took the ones you loved most to die in your heart.

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.

Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

Anyone with a heart, with a family, has experienced loss. No one escapes unscathed. Every story of separation is different, but I think we all understand that basic, wrenching emotion that comes from saying goodbye, not knowing if we'll see that person again - or perhaps knowing that we won't.

When Michael died I was tipped over the edge. I was beyond grief.

For grief is felt not so much for the want of what we have never known, as for the loss of that to which we have been long accustomed.

A thought Of that late death took all my heart for speech.

If you no longer live, if you my beloved, my love, if you have died, all the leaves will fall in my breast, it will rain in my soul night and day, the snow will burn my heart, I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow, my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping, but I shall live

Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street, Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be clasp'd no more - Behold me, for I cannot sleep, And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the door. He is not here; but far away The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day.

Fro and to in my dreams to you To the haunting tune of the harp For the price I paid when you died that day I paid that day with my heart Fro and to in my dreams to you With the breaking of my heart Ne'er more again will I sing this song Ne'er more will I hear the harp.

If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?

The death of a man's wife is like cutting down an ancient oak that has long shaded the family mansion. Henceforth the glare of the world, with its cares and vicissitudes falls upon the old widower's heart, and there is nothing to break their force, or shield him from the full weight of misfortune. It is as if his right hand were withered; as if one wing of his angel was broken, and every movement that he made brought him to the ground.

Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past without looking forward to the future.

For this alone on Death I wreak The wrath that garners in my heart: He put our lives so far apart We cannot hear each other speak.

It breaks my heart to think about a family weeping over the loss of a loved one. I understand the anguish that some feel about the death that takes place.

They say that time heals a broken heart, but time has stood still since we've been apart.

The sorrow that lay cold in her mother's heart... converted it into a tomb.

I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more.

I know what my heart is like Since your love died: It is like a hollow ledge Holding a little pool Left there by the tide, A little tepid pool, Drying inward from the edge.

Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.

Oh, my Margaret--my Margaret! no one can tell what you are to me! Dead--cold as you lie there you are the only woman I ever loved! Oh, Margaret--Margaret!

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.

It is a very vulnerable feeling to lose something very close to your heart or someone very dear to you.