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Sunday 31 December 2023
11 Grief Quotes that are helping me Heal during the dreaded Anniversary of my Loss.
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“When you experience loss, people say you’ll move through the 5 stages of grief…Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. What they don’t tell you is that you’ll cycle through them all every day.” ~ Ranata Suzuki
~
As the third anniversary of my big 2020 tragedy approaches, I think of the above quote all the time.
While the sheer intensity of the grief has changed in three years, I continue to cycle through the above five stages every single day.
Three years.
Sometimes, I think life has flown by over the past three years. At other times, I feel it has stood still.
I go back and look through the many articles I have written on grief and loss (enough to publish as a short novella now) and I genuinely cannot believe how much time has gone by and I am still here.
I still miss the ones I lost in 2020. I still go to bed and wake up in the morning thinking about them. I still remember them every time something good or bad happens to me. I still feel, yearn, and miss them every single day. And I have finally made peace with the fact that I am always going to feel that way.
But even as life has moved on and for the most part I am doing okay now, big moments like anniversaries are tough. I’ve needed some support and clarity for myself, and these quotes on handling grief and mourning the loss of loved ones have been helpful to me.
And if they help you in the process, that would be the icing on the cake.
“Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it ’til it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
“You can never forget the person who died. It’s impossible. You can, however, release the pain and remember the deep love. You can continue to love the deceased while living.” ~ Chelsea Hanson, The Sudden Loss Survival Guide
“Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect.” ~ J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
“There are no happy endings. Endings are the saddest part, so just give me a happy middle and a very happy start.” ~ Shel Silverstein
“When one person is missing, the whole world seems empty.” ~ Pat Schweibert, Tear Soup: A Recipe for Healing After Loss
“The weird, weird thing about devastating loss is that life actually goes on. When you’re faced with a tragedy, a loss so huge that you have no idea how you can live through it, somehow, the world keeps turning, the seconds keep ticking.” ~ James Patterson, Angel
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touches some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.” ~ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
“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
“My sister will die over and over again for the rest of my life. Grief is forever. It doesn’t go away; it becomes a part of you, step for step, breath for breath. I will never stop grieving Bailey because I will never stop loving her. That’s just how it is. Grief and love are conjoined, you don’t get one without the other. All I can do is love her, and love the world, emulate her by living with daring and spirit and joy.” ~ Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere
“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
I hope, unlike me, that you’re not going through loss, pain, and grief during this holiday season. But if you are, please know that there are many of us in the same boat as you—and I hope reading through these quotes helps you even a little bit.
We will always feel the pain of our loss. But knowing that others have been or are going through the same helps us feel less lonely and alone. Godspeed.
~
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The Chrysalis: Loving Awareness from the In-Between.
But what about the waiting,
The in-between.
The void that separates what once was, and what is soon to be.
The period of time from which a beginning and end are seen,
But nobody talks about the space that exists in their seam.
I’m talking about the chrysalis.
Do you ever think about what a butterfly might do
To keep itself busy inside a cocoon?
What if I told you, the answer was this:
Nothing—nothing at all,
It simply exists.
It breathes.
It trusts.
It lives in the waiting.
It basks in the glory of the present moment,
All the while giving thanks
for the transformation unfolding.
Unbeknownst to passersby,
Is the beautiful, powerful, nearly unfathomable growth occurring inside the walls of a fragile little shell.
No more than an inch
No more than a mere droplet of green
Dangling on a branch,
Thriving in the in-between.
For the caterpillar knows it will be held and protected,
Supported by the tree
And soothed by the soft breath of Mother Earth.
It knows that it’s safe
To begin a rebirth.
And so it waits.
It waits with patience,
With trust,
With gentleness,
With ease,
And above all else
With hope—
for the future ahead;
Knowing that the waiting is just as miraculous as what comes at the end.
All the while the caterpillar knows
That the present moment,
Floating in the space between then and now,
Tucked away in a cocoon
Is just as much, if not more beautiful, than the wings—
Waiting patiently to break free.
~
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Read this Buddhist Quote before the End of the Year.
I used to believe there was something extremely special about the New Year.
For me, January 1st marked a new beginning—a whole separate transformation.
I prepared for this big event by making lists, wishes, and lessons. For the entire month of December, I would spend at least 10 minutes every day to revisit the closing year and reflect on what I should do better.
Of course, it goes without saying that I attended NYE parties where I got drunk, counted down to midnight, badly wanted to be kissed at 12:00 a.m., and with a headache and sore throat, welcomed January 1st.
Thank god I traveled to India in my mid-20s to study Buddhism. It was then that all my preconceptions and habits were shattered. Because this is what Buddhism does: it wakes you up, shakes up your beliefs, and literally rearranges your (monkey) mind.
And I needed this. I needed this mental reshuffling.
One of the many books I brought home with me from India and Nepal was from Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse: What Makes you Not a Buddhist. I read his book around September, three months prior to the New Year.
You guessed that right—it was the last time I counted down to midnight, got drunk, or made endless lists and wishes.
Here’s the quote that forever changed my perception of New Year’s Eve:
“In our everyday lives we have this impulse to shield ourselves and others from the truth. We’ve become impervious to obvious signs of decay. We encourage ourselves by ‘not dwelling on it’ and by employing positive affirmations.
We celebrate our birthdays by blowing out candles, ignoring the fact that the extinguished candles could equally be seen as a reminder that we are a year closer to death. We celebrate the New Year with firecrackers and champagne, distracting ourselves from the fact that the old year will never come back and the new year is filled with uncertainty—anything can happen.
When that ‘anything’ is displeasing, we deliberately divert our attention, like a mother distracting a child with rattles and toys.”
Uncertainty, impermanence, decay, distraction, a year closer to death. What? This Tibetan Lama opened my mind to many things I hadn’t considered before. I was busy drinking, celebrating, and making wishes when, in fact, “I was just shielding myself from the truth.”
I was tempted by the expectation that January 1st was going to be different—that I was going to reach everlasting happiness and satisfaction. I didn’t want disappointment, grief, sadness, or surprises. I wanted my life to start again every damn January, disregarding what the past had offered me.
I wanted permanence. I wanted certainty. I wanted reassurance.
I was celebrating not because I was genuinely happy. I was celebrating because, unconsciously, I wanted the bad to end and the “better,” “more hopeful,” “more promising” to begin.
But I was only seeking an illusion. Aren’t we all? Aren’t we all running after the good and totally disregarding the fact that we have no f*cking idea what the next year will bring?
Don’t get me wrong. Realizing the truth of impermanence didn’t piss me off. I wasn’t angry or disappointed. I wasn’t hopeless.
I was liberated.
As the Buddha taught, time is an illusion. Although we talk about today, tomorrow, after tomorrow, hours, minutes, months, and years, in reality, they don’t exist. These are just names that we have created in order to organize our time. Our time…which is relative.
As Shunryu Suzuki mentions in his book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, “Dogen-Zenji said, ‘Even though it is midnight, dawn is here; even though dawn comes, it is nighttime.’ This kind of statement conveys the understanding transmitted from Buddha to the Patriarchs, and the Patriarchs to Dogen, and to us. Nighttime and daytime are not different. The same thing is sometimes called nighttime, sometimes called daytime. They are one thing.”
There is no December 31st and no January 1st. We are celebrating an illusion. All we have is the now. This truth comforted me and brought me peace.
We can still celebrate the New Year, we can kiss at midnight, and we can crack open a bottle of champagne, but what’s our state of mind? Are we aware that the upcoming year is full of uncertainties? That anything can happen? That there will be good times but there will also be bad times? That our life is a combination of both and we can’t escape one cycle or favor the other?
Are we aware that we can make new beginnings anytime we want? That we can transform our lives right here, right now, at this very moment?
Are we aware that there isn’t an actual “year”—only moments? What are you going to do with them?
Happy New Year and may we all appreciate the beautiful truth of impermanence.
~
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AUTHOR: ELYANE YOUSSEF
IMAGE: INGA SELIVERSTOVA/PEXELS
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Like abs Agee with so much you write. Time is sunyata and rigid thinking is a samsaric trap. Where I get perplexed is a year is the time the earth revolves around the sun. Tho following S Suzuki I don’t think about it which is not-doing in the moment. Thank again for a great and beautiful piece.
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