David Kessler

The time will come when memory will bring a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eyes.

wife who loses a husband is called a widow. A husband who loses a wife is called a widower. A child who loses his parents is called an orphan. There is no word for a parent who loses a child. Lose your child and you're… nothing. — Tennessee Williams

talk to other parents who are broken and bitter and feel robbed at the loss of a child. They want to know why I wasn't destroyed by Jim's death. I tell them that his life had meaning even though it was so short, and perhaps he wasn't meant to be here any longer. Being with him when he died was a gift, and I've learned to trust in God, his sovereignty, and his faithfulness. I

grief is optional in this lifetime. Yes, it's true. You don't have to experience grief, but you can only avoid it by avoiding love. Love and grief are inextricably intertwined.

It may feel like all meaning left with the person you lost, but that is not true. You can continue to connect meaningfully with those who are still living, and you can form new connections, too. Those connections do not diminish your love for the person who died. They will only enhance it.

. . . even twins are not here to go on each other's journeys.

We live in a fix-it society with the technology to repair many broken things at our fingertips. We forget that we've all been deliberately designed to "end" one day. When that ending happens, there's nothing to fix. . . This is not giving up, or giving in. It's acceptance.

One night I happened to come upon a documentary called Facing the Storm, about the buffalos in Montana. Robert Thomson of the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks discussed how buffalo run into the storm, thus minimizing how long they will be in it. They don't ignore it, run from it, or just hope it will go away, which is what we often do when we want to avoid our storms of emotion. We don't realize that by doing this we're maximizing our time in the pain. The avoidance of grief will only prolong the pain of grief. Better to turn toward it and allow it to run its natural course, knowing that the pain will eventually pass, that one of these days we will find the love on the other side of pain.

Saya percaya jika sebuah buku tidak berdampak pada penulisnya, buku tersebut tidak akan berdampak pada orang lain.

She realized that for the dying butterflies were a symbol of transformation, not of death, but of life continuing, no matter what. Although your relationship with your loved one will change after death, it will also continue, no matter what. The challenge will be to make it a meaningful one.

A loved one's death is permanent, and that is so heartbreaking. But I believe your loss of hope can be temporary. Until you can find it, I'll hold it for you. I have hope for you. I don't want to invalidate your feelings as they are, but I also don't want to give death any more power than it already has. Death ends a life, but not our relationship, our love, or our hope.

We must move slowly into the unknown of life after death. Underneath the reluctance to live or love again is fear.

Whatever thoughts you water are the thoughts that will grow.

Your life will never be the same, but happiness again is still possible. Never being happy again is a statement about the future. But no one can predict the future. All they can know for sure is that they are unhappy today. It helps to say, "I'm unhappy today," and leave it at that.

We arrive in the middle of the movie and we leave in the middle of the movie.