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Quote by Ocean Vuong

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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

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Ocean Vuong

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“An hour later, a group of men from the funeral home arrived. With my grandfather's help, they cleaned my grandmother's body and marinated it in rice alcohol. When the wine had straightened her limbs, which had stiffened from rigor mortis, they dressed her in new clothes. Using a thick red thread, they tied her two big toes together to prevent her spirit from wandering. A cheap red lacquered coffin was brought into my grandparents' bedroom. A layer of sand was spread at the bottom to cushion the body. Rich families would use tea leaves instead of sand. The more expensive the tea, the richer and higher in status the dead were. We covered the sand with coarse, loosely woven cotton gauze. After my grandmother's body was laid inside the coffin, a small dish filled with burning oil was placed on the ground beneath it to keep her spirit warm. Incense in a large urn perfumed the air. It was time for friends and relatives to pay their respects.”

TraditionMourningDeath And DyingBurialTraditional Tales
Book:The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood
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“Shutter all the windows, bar the door - Pain is what a house is for. Close your eyes when other eyes beseech, turn away from arms that reach. There is no commitment without cost - nothing is loved but can be lost. Better not to meet than have to part - there is no armor for the heart. But always light seeps in through cracks, and dust. No house is built that you can trust, So you may wake one day to find you care a little too much for a chair.”

GriefMourning
Author:Anne Lindbergh
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“In other words, melancholy would be a pathological form of mourning, a sick flight from reality, a flight from the outside world into a refuge, into the inner world of the psyche. What if reality is sick, what then? What if the inner world is destroyed, in ruins and robbed, where to then? So, in grief, the world becomes poor and empty, while in melancholy the ego is like some kind of abandoned archaeological discovery that has been dug up. Yes, the melancholic is a radical atheist who in his hollow discourse worships a dead god.”

PainGriefPsychologyDepressionMourningMelancholyTraumama
Book:Belladonna
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“If your wife, your brother, or God forbid, your child dies, it leaves a big hole in your life. It's much better not to pretend there's no hole. Not to try to, what do they say nowadays, get over it ... when it's time for the Kaddish. You stand up in front of everybody, and you point to the hole, and you say, 'Look at this. This is what I'm living with, this hole.' Eleven months, every week. It doesn't go away, you don't put it behind you.”

DeathMourningKaddish
Book:Moonglow
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“I close my eyes and listen as they circle the living room, making polite offerings. The house is full and yet quiet; it’s as if my ear is pressed against a wall, listening for some great truth. As if we’re underwater, our lives submerged. I imagine the furniture dunking and bobbing, floating and sinking in the sea as we try to arrange it on the ocean floor, one hopeless piece at a time.”

MourningFuneralBereavement
Book:Someone You Love Is Gone
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