Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable haemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed.

For a long time things were so bad. Very bad. Dark even when there was light.
The only thing that kept the dark back was the Forever Shiny Thing that was her secret...
It is a word...the word hangs on a silver chain. The word is HOPE.

...we are all sorry when loss comes for us. The test of our character comes not in how many tears we shed but in how we act after those tears have dried.

All the times I have suddenly realized that my parents are dead, even now, it still surprises me, to exist in the world while that which made me has ceased to exist.

No one knew she cried in the night for Lyle and her lost happiness, that under that biscuit crust exterior she was all butter grief and hunger.

I would try to find joy despite the necessary work of grieving, and I knew full well that work was exactly the right word to describe it. It was John’s life that was over, not mine.