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Quote by Mary Gordon

“A fatherless girl thinks all things are possible, and nothing is safe.”

Book:The Company of Women

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The Company of Women

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Mary Gordon

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“Grief is a country that has no definite borderlines and that recognises no single trajectory. It is a space that did not exist before your loss, and that will never disappear from your map, no matter how hard you rub at the charcoal lines. You are changed utterly, and your personal geography becomes yours and yours only.”

Loss Grief Liminal Spaces

Book:Thin Places

Source: Thin Places

“I never got to wash my mother's body when she died. I return to take care of her in memory. That's how I make peace when things are left undone.”

Death Poetry Loss Poem Mothers Death Of A Mother Funeral Rites Death Rites

Book:An American Sunrise

Source: An American Sunrise

“But unless we make space for grief, we cannot know the depths of the love of God, the healing God wrings from pain, the way grieving yields wisdom, comfort, even joy. If we do not make time for grief, it will not simply disappear. Grief is stubborn. It will make itself heard or we will die trying to silence it. If we don't face it directly it comes out sideways, in ways that aren't always recognizable as grief: explosive anger, uncontrollable anxiety, compulsive shallowness, brooding, bitterness, unchecked addiction. Grief is a ghost that can't be put to rest until its purpose has been fulfilled.”

Loss Grief Regret

Book:Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep

Source: Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep

“After You Left the weight of your absence became a black hole revolving around my memory of you--itself a black hole. Wavelets wrinkled the sheer sheet of space and time. Father, the loss of you is a planet orbiting what might have been. I cannot say if the emptiness is a grand celestial body or a vacuum so complete nothing can escape. I know these forces have mass and motion that bends, calls in, ripples fabric-- distorts the pace of light for a billion years.”

Death Poetry Loss Grief Poem Mourning Fathers Death Of A Father Loss Of A Father

Book:Worldly Things

Source: Worldly Things

“you, man, will you remember me when i die? will you stare and stain my death and say i saw her dancen among swallows far from the world’s obscenities? you, man, will you remember and cry?”

Love Death Poetry Loss Grief Poem Mourning Remembrance

Book:Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems

Source: Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems

“I also felt that I had failed Hans in failing to save his child. Poor Susanna, in that house with me, but really alone. She mended every garment in the home, even those of the children. LittleHammer survived. But she had become cold and aloof. I understood her—to love others is to suffer.”

Loss Grief Loss Of A Child

Book:Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch

Source: Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch

“Come to my funeral dressed as you would for an autumn walk in the woods. Arrive on your schedule; I give you permission to be late, even without good cause. If my day arrives when you had other plans, please proceed with them instead. Celebrate me there--keep dancing.”

Life Death Loss Mourning Funerals Celebration Of Life

Book:Worldly Things

Source: Worldly Things

“All those you thought you lost now circle you And you are free of pain and heartbreak. Don't look back, keep going. We will carry your memory here, until we join you In just a little while, in one blink of star time.”

Death Poetry Loss Grief Poem Memory Mourning Eternal Life

Book:An American Sunrise

Source: An American Sunrise

“Nobody goes anywhere though we are always leaving and returning. It's a ceremony. Sunrise occurs everywhere, in lizard time, human time, or a fern uncurling time.”

Poetry Loss Poem Travel Leaving Returning

Book:An American Sunrise

Source: An American Sunrise

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