When I'm deep in grief's sorrow, I remind myself grief is love persisting

A collection of quotes that have been keeping me going

I lost my aunt just over 100 days ago.

More than an aunt, she was like a mother to me.

When her doctor told her she had two weeks left, I started crying behind her. I wasn’t supposed to. I was supposed to keep a brave front.

But I couldn’t.

That was when I started grieving.

Grief makes you do the strangest things. One night, after my son slept and my wife was working the night shift at the hospital, I stayed up past midnight, watched Netflix, and had a McDonald’s delivery. An Extra Value Meal with additional nuggets and a hot fudge sundae. I rebelled against my decade-long routine of sleeping early, not watching TV, and eating healthily.

This tiny act of defiance helped me cope.

I wish you never have to experience grief. Never have to experience the pain.

But if grief finds you, know that grief is love’s shadow. It hurts because we lost someone we love. The deeper the love, the sharper the pain of goodbye.

At just 32, I have lost too many people I love—several aunts, both grandmothers, and a grandfather. Death is inevitable. So, when the inevitable comes, remember that we grieve because we love.

We grieve because we continue to love the person who is no longer around.

Grief is love persisting.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. —u/GSnow

Here are some quotes and books that I collected since I started grieving and that I have been revisiting whenever I need some extra support to get through the day:

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.

From u/GSnow:

Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see.

As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing.

But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.

Loss changes you. Grief resolves you. Love guides you.

From my former manager

Kevan Lee

’s book about losing his father to brain cancer, Gone Ahead:

There’s a popular sentiment that I clung to when I began the grief process: there’s no wrong way to grieve. This gets translated to “everyone grieves in their own way,” which often ends up feeling like “you grieve alone.”

You do grieve alone, to a certain extent. You grieve when the grief arrives; and the grief rarely calls ahead. Your bad days come and go on whims, arriving like flash floods to drench you while the rest of the world goes about its day with nothing but clear skies. The clear skies will come for you, too. Sometimes they come so early on that you’re unprepared, still wearing your rain slicker and straining not to move on too quickly. You’ll get caught off guard by a memory that doesn’t turn you to puddles, and you’ll wonder why you’re not puddling—am I that callous? am I that forgetful? am I that horribly detached from reality that I’ve already moved on? No, no, and no.

You’re normal, and you love the person no less than you’ve loved them all along.

You never move on, by the way. You move sideways. You change tracks. Life lurches forward, and you find yourself choosing a new path, like a fork in the road with a million tines. Depending on your level of loss, your choice of tine could come quickly or take ages, your path could be adjacent to your previous one, or it could be a world away.

Loss changes you. Grief resolves you. Love guides you.

For in searching, I change. I mature. I heal.

Also from Gone Ahead:

I feel meaning in my own life as I search for meaning in his. Because he is me. The answer, or part of it, is right under my nose, right in this chair as I’m typing these words, it’s wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt and house slippers, and it’s about to go out to the couch to watch a movie with Lindsay. The search for answers to the question of why is likely always to be just that—a search. Yet maybe the search itself is part of the answer.

For in searching, I change. I mature. I heal. In searching for the why, I make the choice to believe that there is a why, and believing in a why is believing that life is bigger than just the sum of its parts, that there is more to it than just random chance or biological consequence. Here I am on a mad hunt for something to hold accountable for my dad’s loss, and my search may very well end with me.

You are a beautiful piece of glass thrown into the fire, and you’re molded, shaped, and different—yet still beautiful.

Also from Gone Ahead:

Death has a way of hanging with you for a while, jumping out of the closet every now and then to remind you that you forgot to deal with this particular part that you had no idea existed. There is no means of fixing you after you’ve lost someone you cherish. Not that you may even want to be fixed. You are not broken, but you’re changed. You are a beautiful piece of glass thrown into the fire, and you’re molded, shaped, and different—yet still beautiful. So it is when you experience grief and loss. You stay yourself and you look different. From my perspective, you come out looking more beautiful than before.

You don’t have to do it all alone. You don’t have to be in control. You don’t have to worry about tomorrow and your future because it will all come soon enough and it will all work better than you could even imagine.

Also from Gone Ahead:

You find yourself at a crossroads, and you pause. Or maybe you push. Or maybe you pause then you push, having no clue how to move forward but needing to move nonetheless. That feeling of stagnation, when all the world around you is humming along yet yours has stopped, that feeling is so uncomfortable, so odd, like your arm’s asleep but you’re playing tennis.

You’re at this crossroads, and you’re stuck. What to do next? Why am I here? Why this crossroads of all the crossroads? Couldn’t it have been a cooler crossroad like the one on the Beatles album? But no, you get this one and you have to figure it out on your own. You’ll choose a path, you’ll move ahead, and you’ll face whatever comes next.

But you won’t face it alone.

We’ll be here with you, your friends and us strangers. We’ll be with you because we’ve been there, too—different crossroads at different times but still the same bumpy paths that lead to somewhere.

They lead to the light, and we are waiting. We are pulling for you. We are praying for you. We have bear hugs to buoy you and shoulders to cry on. There are cookies baking for you in the oven.

You are not alone, and neither were we. It felt like it at times. We cried alone in the car, and we cried alone—surrounded by tens or hundreds of people—in our deep and utter lostness, our untethered futures, and our uncertain tomorrows. We cried and cried and then we lifted our heads up and we moved on. There was someone watching out for us, and there is someone watching out for you.

You don’t have to do it all alone. You don’t have to be in control. You don’t have to worry about tomorrow and your future because it will all come soon enough and it will all work better than you could even imagine. Oh, if only you could know! You can’t imagine all the good things now because you’re in the midst of the bad, but trust me, you’ve got great things ahead of you. Anything is possible, starting whenever you’re ready.

You might not be ready for a while, and that’s okay. Take your time; we’ll keep compassion on the stove. No rush; we’re not going anywhere. If you’re not ready yet, we’ll still be watching, cheering, pulling for you to pull through like we know you will, when the time is right and time has passed and the world’s put back together.

You can do it.

We did it.

We’re here now, on the other side of loss, to tell you that things get brighter. XOXO, hold on. Your invincible future sends its love.

The Year of Magical Thinking

One of the hardest things I felt about grief is feeling alone. Nobody seems to understand me. And that’s because nobody in the entire world had the same relationship as I had with my aunt.

But reading Joan Didion’s book made me feel less alone. Her situation was very different from mine but she described many feelings and thoughts that I had and have.

I didn’t highlight any particular sentence or paragraph to revisit. I always pick it up when the grief wave hits me and I want to be alone but supported.

On certain days, I’m not sure that the gains are not as great as, or even greater than, the inevitable losses.

After losing her husband suddenly, Sheryl Sandberg wrote Option B, with the help of famour psychologist Adam Grant.

Scanning through my highlights, few quotes had a great impact on me. But the book suggested some concrete steps, backed by research, for moving forward.

Honestly, it wasn’t the book I wanted to read at the peak of my grief because it sometimes felt too scientific and too objective, and I couldn’t connect with it emotionally. It was more suitable when I had passed the initial phase of grief.

I now know that it’s possible not just to bounce back but to grow. Would I trade this growth to have Dave back? Of course. No one would ever choose to grow this way. But it happens—and we do. As Allen Rucker wrote about his paralysis, “I won’t make your skin crawl by saying it’s a ‘blessing in disguise.’ It’s not a blessing and there is no disguise. But there are things to be gained and things to be lost, and on certain days, I’m not sure that the gains are not as great as, or even greater than, the inevitable losses.”

On the Shortness of Life

I read Seneca’s essay while accompanying my aunt in her final days. By then, it was too late to spend more time with her. I was with her every day but she was no longer responsive.

I don’t want to be too late again. I try to cherish every moment with my family and avoid needless trivialities.

Honestly, being human, I take things for granted after a while. This is why, as painful as it is to write this essay and revisit some painful memories, I wanted to remind myself to live intentionally.

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in headless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.