orleans
orleans's Journali'm so sorry
"To Those I Love And Those Who Love Me
When I Am Gone, Release Me, Let Me Go
I Have Fulfilled My Duty Here You Know
You Must Not Tie Yourself To Me With Tears
Be Thankful For Our Many Years
I Gave To You My Love. You Can Only Guess
How Much You Gave To Me In Happiness
I Thank You For The Love You Each Have Shown
But Now It’s Time I Traveled On Alone
So Grieve Awhile For Me, If Grieve You Must,
Then Let Your Grief Be Comforted By Trust
It’s Only For A Time That We Must Part
So Bless The Memories Within Your heart
Though You Can’t See Or Touch Me, I’ll Be Near
And If You Listen With Your Heart, You’ll Hear
All My Love Around You From Morn Til Night,
I’ll Forever Have You In My Sight
And Then When You Must Come This Way Alone
I’ll Greet You With A Smile And Say
Welcome Home!"
--author unknown
more quotes
“There's a fine edge to new grief, it severs nerves, disconnects reality--there's mercy in a sharp blade. Only with time, as the edge wears, does the real ache begin.”
― Christopher Moore
“Love is an engraved invitation to grief.”
― Sunshine O'Donnell, Open Me
“Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can't even cry.”
― Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
“I have lived with you and loved you, and now you are gone. Gone where I cannot follow, until I have finished all of my days.”
― Victoria Hanley, The Seer and the Sword
“Who wants to know that the person you love and need the most can just vanish forever”
― Jandy Nelson, The Sky is Everywhere
“You can't have real pain without real love. You can't feel grief and loss and hurt without real love. Love is the only way you can ever be really hurt deep down.”
― Katherine Applegate, Beach Blondes: June Dreams, July's Promise, August Magic
“...for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you were. All your grief hasn't changed a thing. What you have lost will not be returned to you. It will always be lost. You're only left with your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is go on or not.”
― Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain
“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect the shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be "healing." A certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to "get through it," rise to the occasion, exhibit the "strength" that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves the for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief was we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
“We were talking the other evening about the phrases one uses when trying to comfort someone who is in distress. I told him that in English we sometimes say, 'I've been there.' This was unclear to him at first-I've been where? But I explained that deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific loacation, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.
'So sadness is a place?' Giovanni asked.
'Sometimes people live there for years,' I said.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
“I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they'll 'say something about it' or not. I hate if they do, and if they don't.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
“We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world--the company of those who have known suffering.”
― Helen Keller
“Ten years, she's dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more be gone than gravity or the moon.”
― Mary Karr, Lit
“Could you visit me in dreams? That would cheer me.
Sweet to see friends in the night, however short the time.”
― Anne Carson, Grief Lessons: Four Plays
“The numbness of his loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over, racking my body with sobs. Where are you? I would cry out in my mind. Where have you gone? Of course, there was never any answer.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
“Sometimes, there was no getting over it. Sometimes, you lived with the empty place inside of you until you imploded on it, loss as singularity, or until the empty place expanded and hollowed out the rest of you so thoroughly you became the walking dead, a ghost in your own life.”
― Caitlin Kittredge, Bone Gods
to page 20 on goodreads
"Your Life After Their Death" and 10 common signs a loved one is communicating with you
ran across this website, and this new book.
i haven't read it yet but i plan to
snip:
“Your Life After Their Death is truly an inspirational book that offers comfort and peace to those who were left behind by their loved ones. It also offers practical exercises that will assist you in your journey back to a life filled with hope.”
— Anita Moorjani, author of Dying to Be Me
In Your Life After Their Death, psychic medium Karen Noé shows you how to move on and enjoy life again after you’ve lost a loved one. As she often states, “Your deceased loved ones are okay and want you to be okay, too!”
snip:
"She also shows you how to maintain your connection with your loved ones—and even your pets!—who have passed away. You’ll learn how to communicate with them and recognize “without a doubt” signs from them, as well as how to connect with a reputable psychic medium. "
http://www.throughtheeyesofanother.com/booksummary
the ten common signs pertain to:
animals, objects, smells, music, dreams, numbers, sense of peace, thoughts, electricity, and ??? ear buzzing?
http://www.throughtheeyesofanother.com/articles/the-ten-most-common-signs-deceased-loved-ones-give-to-let-us-know-they-are-around.php
since my mom died i've experienced a tremendous amount of signs from the objects, smells, numbers, sense of peace, thoughts, electricity categories; quite a few animal signs, a lot of word signs (not on list--such as asking for a sign & getting it in the form of license plates), actually hearing her say my name one time. i'd have to think about the ear buzzing thing. i never made a connection with that.
anyway, the book sounds interesting. just an fyi
i just wanted to post on this thread too (and kick it)
and say:
i know.
i remember.
same thing happened to me.
those devastating moments when reality settles in.
quotes on grief
“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.”
― Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and John Kessler
“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
“There is a sacredness in tears....They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.”
― Washington Irving
“You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”
― Anne Lamott
“Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face - I know it's an impossibility, but I cannot help myself.”
― Nicholas Sparks, Message in a Bottle
“When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
“Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”
― Robert Frost
“They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince
“You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
“It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses. ”
― Colette
“Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.”
― Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever
“There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rulebook that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after 42 days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name. That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork from the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass - if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it. That it's okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
“It sucks that we miss people like that. You think you've accepted that someone is out of your life, that you've grieved and it's over, and then bam. One little thing, and you feel like you've lost that person all over again.”
― Rachel Hawkins, Demonglass
“But when I do feel all the strength go out of me, and I fall to my knees beside the table and I think I cry, then, or at least I want to, and everything inside me screams for just one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant
“Relationships take up energy; letting go of them, psychiatrists theorize, entails mental work. When you lose someone you were close to, you have to reassess your picture of the world and your place in it. The more your identity was wrapped up with the deceased, the more difficult the loss.”
― Meghan O'Rourke
“Every widow wakes one morning, perhaps after years of pure and unwavering grieving, to realize she slept a good night's sleep, and will be able to eat breakfast, and doesn't hear her husband's ghost all the time, but only some of the time. Her grief is replaced with a useful sadness. Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-grandchildren's will be. But we learn to live in that love.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
“So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
“And no matter what anybody says about grief and about time healing all wounds, the truth is, there are certain sorrows that never fade away until the heart stops beating and the last breath is taken.”
― Tiffanie DeBartolo
“Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering.”
― Roland Barthes
“Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant
“When one person is missing the whole world seems empty.”
― Pat Schweibert, Tear Soup: A Recipe for Healing After Loss
“It reminds me that no embrace will ever feel the same again, because no one will ever be like her again, because she's gone. She's gone, and crying feels so useless, so stupid, but it's all I can do.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant
(6 pages of selected quotes from goodreads dot com)
types of grief
apparently there are many types of grief we can experience and i found a list of them on a blog written by two mental health professionals:
http://whatsyourgrief.com/about-whats-your-grief/
normal grief
anticipatory grief
complicated grief
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2691160/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complicated_grief_disorder
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/complicated-grief/basics/symptoms/con-20032765
chronic grief
delayed grief
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_grief
distorted grief
prolonged grief
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prolonged_grief_disorder
exaggerated grief
masked grief
disenfranchised grief
traumatic grief
collective grief
ambiguous grief
inhibited grief
abbreviated grief
absent grief
and
cumulative grief
http://whatsyourgrief.com/cumulative-grief-aka-grief-overload/
http://whatsyourgrief.com/types-of-grief/
"What We Have Once Enjoyed And Deeply Loved We Can Never Lose, For All That We Love Deeply Becomes A Part Of Us." --Helen Keller
i'm truly sorry to hear your mom died
going through that with my mom was (and continues to be) the most difficult & devastating experience of my life (and it's been over four years now)
i lost a lot of weight too (almost twice as much as you--but it was across the first six months or so) because i couldn't eat. i bitterly referred to it as the death diet. be careful with that. i eventually ended up in the i.c.u. for four days needing a blood transfusion because of a bleeding ulcer i developed (from the stress, a lot of coffee, and occasional advil.)
i saw your other post about about sleeping and i remember, in those first months, waking up and then seconds later (when i'd realize she wasn't here) i'd burst into tears; feet not yet on the floor, head still on pillow, covers still on, and i was starting off another day feeling so utterly devastated. i still don't sleep for long periods of time but those morning tears don't happen anymore. (at this point in time my emotional floodgates don't open until late afternoon, evening, or late at night before bed. and not every day either. although last night i probably spent close to two hours in an emotional tailspin--and today my eyes are terribly swollen as a result.)
professional counseling or grief groups may have helped me but i never went (for several complicated reasons). but it might be something you can consider.
i hope you take care of yourself. 
thank you.
i know what you mean about wondering what else you could have done. i played that tormenting song over and over for a long long time. every once in awhile i still play it but mostly i have managed to forgive myself for not being able to foresee or predict the future.
my heart aches for her with a pain i have never known. i love her beyond words and miss her just as much. it's astounding to realize the intensity of the bonds we are capable of creating with others. my mom always said i was "overly emotional" and i had a dismissive tendency to chalk it up to having a "poet's soul." but these past years? i never knew these waters ran so deep.
sometimes i feel she is watching me, shaking her head sadly, sympathizing with my plight, and yet amazed to realize how much she is loved.
thank you for your warmth and hugs. you're not alone either. 
i'm sorry for your loss
this is my fifth mother's day without my mom
i saw my daughter today and that helped a lot but i was alone yesterday and it was really hard--i had a terrible time missing her so badly
back home now, watching long island medium, feeling a bit exhausted from all of yesterday's tears & emotional upheaval
it's really hard. still.
omg--you are so lucky
i was hoping for the same thing but i don't recall it happening.
i had a bad day & night yesterday, missing my mom so very much. i wonder how today is going to be.
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Gender: FemaleMember since: Fri Nov 26, 2004, 05:56 AM
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