Life After Loss Quotes

Most people think that a widow is inhabiting some elegiac world of - it's like Mozart's 'Requiem Mass.' You know, it's very beautiful and elevated thoughts and some measure of dignity. I didn't have that experience at all. I had one pratfall after another.

Spouses have each other, and even when one eventually dies, they have memories of a time when they existed before that other person and can more readily imagine a life without them. Likewise, parents may have other children to be concerned with--a future to protect for them. To lose a sibling is to lose the one person with whom one shares a lifelong bond that is meant to continue on into the future.

My mum died about three years ago at the age of 101, and just towards the end, as she began to run out of energy, she did actually stop trying to tell me what to do most of the time.

When my mother passed away I was 20.

When we lost Steve, it was a real crossroads of deciding if you're just going to curl up in the corner or try to do something even bigger and better.

The weird, weird thing about devastating loss is tha life actually goes on.

Steven [Sebring] was documenting me as a widow with two children, going from 50 to 60 years old. My focus, during that time, was to rediscover myself, stay healthy, take care of my kids and reestablish a relationship with the people.

Sure, losing an election hurts, but I've experienced worse. And at an age when every day is precious, brooding over what might have been is self-defeating. In conceding the 1996 election, I remarked that "tomorrow will be the first time in my life I don't have anything to do." I was wrong. Seventy-two hours after conceding the election, I was swapping wisecracks with David Letterman on his late-night show.

Because my husband, Peter, died young, I've already faced the scariest thing in my life. Now I live out the dreams for both of us.

The experience of losing a loved one impels us toward a deeper understanding of life. Everyone fears and is saddened by death. That is natural. But by struggling to overcome the pain and sadness that accompanies death, we become sharply aware of the dignity and preciousness of life and develop the compassion to share the sufferings of others as our own.

I was 37 when my father died-and I no longer had any freedom of choice over what I would do with the rest of my life.

After President Mutharika was declared a winner, there was life after State House. For those Malawians that know me, I am an international public speaker. So I went back to my speaking engagements.

My dad passed away when I was 10.

We all have such stories. It is a brutal arithmetic. But I - I am alive. You are alive. As long as we breathe, we can see and hear. As long as we can remember, all those gone before are alive inside us.

When my father died, I was 21, and he'd been sick for a few years. He changed during his illness. He kind of softened during it.

After my husband died more than a decade ago, my mother prayed that I would remarry so that I could have a "normal" life again. Many people assumed that it would be too difficult for me to carry on as a single mother and raise a child without a man at my side. As the years went by, I found that it was indeed possible and that, in fact, I had no desire to remarry.

If suddenly you do not exist, If suddenly you are not living, I shall go on living. I do not dare, I do not dare to write it, if you die. I shall go on living.

When you lose a parent, you realize how vital they are to the foundation of your life. It's impossible to understand what it means until that curtain is pulled. You're an orphan. But then I think that life is kind of remarkable, and the thing that causes the biggest pain can also bring amazing energy.

Of course when you lose your parent, it's like one chapter in your book of life ends. It's difficult but it's a part of life and you have to accept it.

I kept asking myself if I felt different, if I was different. The answer was always yes. I was no longer nothing… How odd, I thought; it had taken my mother’s death, Father Quinel’s murder, and the desire of others to kill me to claim a life of my own.

Some women lose their husbands, and their worlds change because their financial circumstances change. All I have in common with them is a grief.

Widows tend either to fade away when husbands die, committing emotional suttee, or else find that a new life burgeons. Here in Christchurch, a lot of burgeoning goes on.