American - Poet | 1976 -
Grief is a bad moon, a sleeper wave. It's like having an inner combatant, a saboteur who, at the slightest change in the sunlight, or at the first notes of a jingle for a dog food commercial, will flick the memory switch, bringing tears to your eyes.
Meghan O'Rourke
DogChangeEyesFoodGriefMemory
All love stories are tales of beginnings. When we talk about falling in love, we go to the beginning, to pinpoint the moment of freefall.
LoveMomentBeginningFalling In Love
I wasn't prepared for the fact that grief is so unpredictable. It wasn't just sadness, and it wasn't linear. Somehow I'd thought that the first days would be the worst and then it would get steadily better - like getting over the flu. That's not how it was.
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A death from a long illness is very different from a sudden death. It gives you time to say goodbye and time to adjust to the idea that the beloved will not be with you anymore.
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But there is a discomfort that surrounds grief. It makes even the most well-intentioned people unsure of what to say. And so many of the freshly bereaved end up feeling even more alone.
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Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me.
MotherMeLossDieNothingKnowing
There is always tension in women's gymnastics between athleticism, grace, performance, and eros.
WomenGracePerformanceAlwaysEros
A mother, after all, is your entry into the world. She is the shell in which you divide and become a life. Waking up in a world without her is like waking up in a world without sky: unimaginable.
LifeMotherSkyWorldYouBecome
To mourn is to wonder at the strangeness that grief is not written all over your face in bruised hieroglyphics. And it's also to feel, quite powerfully, that you're not allowed to descend into the deepest fathom of your grief - that to do so would be taboo somehow.
GriefFaceFeelYouWonderDeepest
My whole life, I had been taught to read and study, to seek understanding in knowledge of history, of cultures.
LifeKnowledgeHistoryUnderstanding
Loss doesn't feel redeemable. But for me one consoling aspect is the recognition that, in this at least, none of us is different from anyone else: We all lose loved ones; we all face our own death.
DeathMeFaceLovedLossLose
What's endlessly complicated in thinking about women's gymnastics is the way that vulnerability and power are threaded through the sport.
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