I felt my aloneness like a coat. You think you get used to death in the dying. But after the dying is done, you see how the end is the beginning.

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.

...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.

I cried until my eyes swelled shut, and then I slept, a black, dreamless sleep from which I awoke amazingly refreshed, at least until I remembered.

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 was in love and love died and the pain you've left isn't pain I can see myself having the strength to face again.